


keep the light on

by renlyne



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: And By This Nonsense He Means His Emotions, Canon Compliant, Future Fic, Harry Styles is a Good Friend, M/M, Nick Grimshaw Also Believes Himself To Be Far Too Old for This Nonsense, Nick Grimshaw Deserves the World, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 02:59:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renlyne/pseuds/renlyne
Summary: but·ter·fly ef·fectnoun1. (with reference to chaos theory) the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.2. a cumulatively large effect that a very small or seemingly insignificant natural force may produce over a period of time.In which Harry Styles tears up over glitter, and Nick Grimshaw’s life becomes immeasurably more complicated.Or: it’s 2020, and really, better late than never.





	keep the light on

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Only I could write a fic for my happy ship and decide that, hey, you know what’s missing? A good, healthy dose of emotional destruction. I am so sorry. (Plot twist: I’m not that sorry).
> 
> A massive thank you to [writsgrimmyblog](https://writsgrimmyblog.tumblr.com/) for reading this through multiple times and answering questions like “do British people say the word couch??” at 2am and encouraging me to expand the first scene into a (reasonably) coherent story. Any remaining errors are 100% my own.
> 
> Please note: This fic is based on the public personas of real people, but obviously it is in no way intended to reflect reality. Here’s to hoping that no one mentioned in this fic ever sees it, and if you’re tagged above and are somehow reading this—dear god, turn back now.
> 
> (Also just a heads up that the point of view switches back and forth, and there’s the odd time jump. It’s fairly evident from context, but I figure forewarned is forearmed.)

 

 

Later, he’ll wonder if it was karma for the cigarette that set the whole chain into motion.

Harry had always disliked smoking, always thought it was a bit stupid to take up a habit that was going to bring little if any benefit, and make you beholden to it. Just one more way to cede some of your independence, never mind the health risk.

He’d never been the lecturing type, but he’d made the odd comment to Louis and Zayn, way back when. Even to Nick himself.

The thing was, it was all a little too reminiscent of a horribly cliched film to seem real. Obviously Harry’s life hadn’t exactly been lacking in surreal experiences, but this stood out as one of the more truly unbelievable moments. The whole fiasco of a night felt steeped in irreality, as if it had been some sort of stress-induced hallucination, or else a dream he’d been about to start awake from.

So he’ll wonder, just a bit, if deciding to see if nicotine really was as relaxing as people claimed had somehow led to all of this. Set off some sort of strange karmic chain reaction.

(In slightly more introspective moments, he’ll wonder whether the karma was good or bad.)

 

.

 

Gemma had a fierce expression on her face, which in and of itself wasn’t unusual. His sister always looked a mixture of amused and like she could kill a man with a spoon, and he adored her for it.

The problem was that she was making a beeline through the crowd of moderately smashed party goers right in his direction, her gaze laser-focused on him.

Harry had been receiving media training since he was sixteen years old, and he knew exactly what expression was on his face. He was almost positive he looked polite, pleased and excited, smile firmly fixed and well-wishes on his lips, ready to contribute his half of the million “aren’t they just _darling_ together” conversations he’d already been a part of, even though it couldn’t have been later than half seven. He hadn’t even been checking his watch to figure out how much longer he was going to be standing there, wondering how he managed to momentarily forget that he didn’t like the taste of champagne every time a waiter walked past with a tray.

The music was good at least, though that hadn’t exactly come as a surprise given the co-host of this particular gathering.

And objectively, the rest of it was rather lovely as well. The venue was somehow managing a mixture of nightclub and home comfort vibes, with dim lights and a DJ booth, space cleared for dancing, and a bar off to the side, the bartenders decked out in spectacularly gaudy glowstick jewellery. Yet there was art on the walls, and incredibly comfortable sofas lining the corners of the room where people were sprawled, drinking and laughing and playing something that might have been poker but equally might have been Go Fish.

It was all so very _Nick_ that Harry wanted to cry a little, so he focused on watching the edible glitter that had been dropped into the champagne flute float through the glass as he swirled it around.

Glitter, in champagne.

Of course.

The slight burning of his eyes suggested that he should’ve probably looked elsewhere, somewhere less likely to bring everything he’d been trying not to think about back to the surface.

Easier said than done, if he were being honest.

The media training apparently couldn’t save him, because the first thing Gemma said when she finally reached him was, “Bloody hell, are you hiding over here by yourself _crying_?”

Which was particularly unfair, because he was in plain sight of the room, and hiding would have been a vast overstatement of his desire to avoid conversation for a minute.

“Course not,” he got out, praying that she’d write off the slight roughness of his voice as champagne-induced. (He’d decided that being too honest was a bit overrated, anyways.)

Her narrowing eyes would suggest not, and the searching stare she levelled at him was nerve wracking given how unerringly well she’d always been able to read him.

“Harry…” she started, trailing off as the question in her eyes started to fade into something like understanding.

They were silent for a minute, Gemma trying to keep eye contact and Harry desperately trying to avoid it. Finally he shook his head.

“Don’t.”

Her eyes widened even further, likely at the fact that he still hadn’t managed to get his voice fully under control.

“ _Harry._ ”

“Gem, I’m begging you, please don’t.”

“But,” she paused, “but I don’t understand. Isn’t this what you wanted? I thought you two called all that off years ago. Wasn’t that what you said? That you’d both grown out of it, and it was better like this because you wanted so badly to be friends?”

He looked around, even now always waiting for someone to jump out with an iPhone camera, and lowered his voice.

“That is what I said. That’s what I said, and I meant it.” She just looked at him, and he sighed, let the silence stretch, told himself to stop talking before he made anything worse. “I meant some of it.”

So, firm no on the _stop talking_ then, but that was fine.

Everything was fine.

His sister was just succeeding where interviewers across the globe had failed, making him feel compelled to explain himself. Either that or he’d had more of the damned sparkly champagne than would have been advisable.

Daisy caught his eye from across the room just then, huge smile on her face and an arm around someone he didn’t recognize. He put on a rather believable grin in return, raised his glass in her direction, and waved. She waved back, giggling with the girl next to her, and Harry let out a sigh of relief. Clearly he wasn’t telegraphing distress to the point where his friends ( _Nick’s friends_ , his mind whispered, _Nick’s friends first_ ) could see it on his face or would feel compelled to investigate.

Gemma put a hand on his arm, and her understanding look had transformed into one of concern.

“Did you mean the ‘growing out of it’ part?” she asked, her tone suggesting that she already knew the answer.

He’d always been excellent at deflection. “It is better this way, Gem. He’s my friend, one of my best friends. And really, who were we ever kidding? Last time,” he shook his head, but couldn’t seem to stop the memories from flooding his mind. “You saw what the tabloids were writing about him. You saw the death threats and the tweets and the mobs of people taking pictures of us buying fucking groceries. It’s better. It is.”

If it were possible for pauses to feel judgemental, this one would have.

“You’re not serious,” she said, flatly, the concern now warring with incredulity. “The tabloids? You’re going to live your life based on what the tabloids are saying about you?”

“Gem,” he tried, but she cut him off, always a master at shouting in a whisper.

“And _last time_ you were a kid, Harry! You could barely vote! You were on tour or in LA all the time, and you were a fourth, or a fifth, whatever, it’s beside the point, you were a _member_ of the world’s biggest boyband. You had a lot more to consider, things that kept this from happening—”

“Gem,” he finally broke in, “More things that kept this from happening? Have you forgotten where we are right now?”

She shook her head and bit her lip, so clearly she hadn’t.

Gemma looked away first this time, a crease appearing between her eyes. “You should tell him, Harry.”

Harry blinked.

“What?” he breathed. “I bloody well should not. Can you think of a worse time?”

As soon as he said it he realised his mistake.

Gemma raised a sardonic eyebrow, clearly thinking along the same lines. Which, yes, he could absolutely think of a worse time, roughly any time after tomorrow would be a much worse time, but he wasn’t exactly planning to speak up then either. Or ever, preferably.

“You should tell him,” she repeated. “He deserves to know.”

“He deserves not to have to deal with this on top of everything else.”

“Harry,” she started, and he really needed Gemma to stop saying his name like that. In fact, he needed to stop having this conversation at all. He was fine. He’d survived stadium tours on no sleep, he’d starred in a film by Christopher bloody Nolan, he’d written and toured two solo albums, and he was a twenty-six year old with homes on multiple continents and more money than he could ever use. Clearly he could handle this party, and the ceremony tomorrow, and the days after that.

He just needed some air.

He said as much to Gemma, and she evidently decided against trying to stop him, though he didn’t doubt that she’d follow him out of the back exit he’d ducked through before too long.

The cool air felt good, deep breaths making him feel a bit more settled. It was one of the things he loved about London. You could never take a satisfying breath of damp evening air in LA.

There was a man about Nick’s age sitting on the curb a few feet in front of him, who turned around when he stepped out of the door. Harry didn’t recognize him (and when exactly did he stop knowing the people in Nick’s life?), and by some miracle, he didn’t seem to recognize Harry. Either that or he just wasn’t fussed with former-pop-stars-turned-maybe-rock-stars.

The bloke gave a half smile and gestured next to him, offering Harry a fag when he sat down.

Harry’s automatic refusal was halfway out of his mouth when he noticed his hands shaking slightly. He remembered Zayn once telling him that smoking was the only time he felt truly relaxed, during one of the rare real conversations they’d had near the end there. Strange that he should think of that now, so many years later. Harry’d always been a big believer in listening to his body, though, and maybe there was a reason that had popped into his head right then.

He found himself nodding, saying “Cheers, man,” when offered a light, almost smiling at the combination of ‘cheers’ and one of the slight Americanisms he could never quite let go of. He got a nod in return, another half smile, before the man stood up and told him he was heading back in.

It wasn’t until he was gone that Harry realised he maybe should have responded somehow, or asked his name.

Christ, how much had he had to drink? He was always mocked for his slow speech, but usually his thoughts weren’t so sluggish.

He took a long drag unthinkingly, coughed on the smoke, narrowly avoided retching, and ended up just putting the damn thing out. What was he _doing_? He was meant to be helping with the hosting, for God’s sake. He needed to get back in there before people really did think he was hiding.

Just as he’d resolved to give himself another minute of wallowing before pulling himself together and bringing out the trademarked version of Harry Styles, the door opened behind him. Right on cue. He was surprised it had even taken her the five minutes he’d been out here to come after him.

Without lifting his head from where he’d let it fall into his hands, he let out a laugh that sounded about as painful as it felt.

“Christ Gem, I’m not going to ‘tell him’,” his air-quotes were audible. “It’s the night before his bloody wedding. Even I’m not that selfish.”

Silence, and then there was a cut-off choking noise. Which…no. There was no way. Harry whipped around, only stumbling slightly as he shot to his feet.

And stared.

Harry thought wildly, and slightly hysterically, that if anyone were filming this, it would make incredible cinema.

His eyes were wide enough that they were starting to blur, because that was not Gemma. Utterly impossibly, that was Nick, with Aimee standing next to him, both of them having clearly just stepped out the door, and goggling right back at him.

Aimee had her hands clasped over her mouth and nose in such a stereotypical image of shock that he might have laughed at any other time. As it was, he was staring at her in horrified disbelief (of his options, she was the far safer one to fix his eyes on), trying desperately to replay exactly what he’d just said.

Maybe there was a way he could spin this to mean something else. He was good at spin. He just needed to come up with an alternate explanation, laugh easily and say that wasn’t what it had sounded like, offer some other scenario it could’ve conceivably applied to. And then they could go back to pretending. This would be a moment they could laugh about for years. _Remember that time Nick and Aimee actually thought Harry had accidentally made some sort of night-before-the-wedding confession? It was proper romcom material._ It would be hilarious.

He was silent.

Never, in all his years of answering questions that often verged on obscene, had his mind been quite this blank.

They were all frozen, staring at each other, for what felt like a small eternity.

Nick, naturally, recovered first, never one to abide a silence.

“What?” he croaked.

So recovered was possibly an overstatement. It was enough for Harry though. It snapped him out of his paralyzed panic, let him regain some control of his expression.

“God, sorry. Sorry. Uh, I thought you were Gemma. She, um, before. She wanted me to talk to—,” he couldn’t think of a single person’s name all of the sudden, which was impressive given the number of people he called friends. “Um, Jeff. She wanted me to call Jeff, to ask about...to tell him about the single,” that Harry was not currently working on a single was beside the point, “but I thought, I can’t do that...it’s your wedding party. Pre-wedding party? Bachelor’s party? I can’t remember what you said on the invitation, but they were really beautiful. Tasteful. The invites I mean,” he coughed, walking slowly backwards towards the door. “Really lovely design. Um, anyways, so I’m not going to call him, it’s been decided, no worries about that. It can, y’know, it can wait.”

The only thing he could think of, aside from the looks on their faces, was Robin saying “All right, Al Pacino” at Christmas that one year, and Nick ribbing him about it on the radio. Clearly Robin had been onto something. Not his finest performance.

God.

If that had managed to convince either Nick or Aimee to reinterpret any part of the past five minutes, they were a lot more gullible than he’d given them credit for.

Thankfully he’d finally reached the door, and with one last smile that likely looked about as realistic as it felt, he ducked back inside, stumbled, and righted himself against the wall.

It was almost a shame he couldn’t share this experience with his twenty-two year old self, because if he could have pulled out this memory to guide him he’d probably have needed fewer Dunkirk reshoots. The horror would have been so genuine even Chris couldn’t have found fault with his expression.

 _Fuck_.

He had to get out of here before he made anything worse. Give Nick and Aimee a chance to cool off, get his own head in order, and then tomorrow everyone could pretend like nothing had ever happened.

People were good at that where he and Nick were concerned anyways, he thought, with a bitterness that surprised him. What was _happening_ to him tonight?

If he could just get home and go to bed, tomorrow would be a new day. Potentially a bloody awful and now painfully awkward one, but a new day nonetheless.

He just had to get out of this party without seeing Gem, or his mum. He was sure he looked a state, and the thought of well-meaning condolences was turning his stomach.

The quiet of his house and a potential phone call to Niall, who would talk to him without needing Harry to explain himself? That much he could handle.

Thoughts of karma and the butterfly effect and cigarette causality came later.

Right at that moment, the only thing on his mind was the fight or flight response that had kicked in the exact second he’d heard Nick cough. Surprising absolutely no one, given his affinity for swallows and butterflies and his famously nomadic ways, Harry chose flight.

And if it felt a little more like running away than it usually did, well.

No one had to know but him.

 

.

 

He almost jumped out of his skin when the doorbell rang.

The idea of phoning Niall had long since been abandoned, left in the back of that club with yet another piece of Harry’s emotional stability. He hadn't expected to talk to anyone tonight, nevermind have someone show up at his house. So few people had his gate code, and he’d just left most of them at the party.

Stumbling over to the little monitor, Harry stared at the tiny pixelated image of Nick for a stunned minute before it registered that _Nick was at his door_ and he rushed across the hall to let him in.

He flung the door open so quickly that he almost didn’t have enough time to step out of the way before it hit him.

“Did you see them?” he demanded the second Nick came into view, despite knowing that he likely looked a bit mad, eyes wild and hair that he’d run his fingers through too many times. He was torn between horror at the idea that Nick had happened upon the same scene he had and perverse thanks that he wasn’t going to have to explain what he’d seen.

The look on Nick’s face had his heart sinking though, shifting from the careful neutrality that Harry knew he had to have been practicing in the car to bewildered confusion.

“Did I…? What?”

Harry couldn’t do this on the doorstep, especially at the realization that Nick was still one crisis behind him. God, was Nick there to tell him they should take a bit of time before they saw each other? He wouldn’t be cruel about it, Harry was positive, but Nick was also in love, and about to get married, and probably thought Jamie wouldn’t much appreciate the intrusion of Harry into their newlywed bliss given the revelations of the past few hours.

The thought of Jamie made him feel a bit sick. Fuck, how was he going to break it to Nick? How do you tell someone something like that? _Do_ you tell someone something like that? Especially a couple hours after accidentally acting out a scene from a soap opera?

Maybe he’d google _what to do if you mistake someone for your sister and confess feelings for them the night before their wedding, and then catch their fiance in a compromising position with someone else? Oh and you used to sort-of-date before your career and the paparazzi interrupted it, but now it’s just friends. Just in case that changes anything about the advice._

On second thought, maybe he wouldn’t do that.

Christ, how was any of this _real_?  

Nick evidently took his silent staring as an invitation to come in, and edged around him where he was frozen in the entry way. Probably wise, because with all the luck he’d been having recently someone would have snapped a picture of them and they’d end up on the front page of the Mail. There’d be some sort of sensationalized _TROUBLE IN PARADISE, GRIMMY?_ headline, and an article that heavily alluded Nick was a slag and fucking around behind Jamie’s back on the eve of their wedding. Little did they know how wrong they’d have that one.

 _Fuck_ , he thought emphatically. He had to tell Nick. He had to.

He couldn’t open his mouth.

“Harry…”

And if there was any doubt that Nick was there about the almost-confession, that erased it. If one more person said his name in that same careful way tonight Harry was going to scream. He shook his head.

“Nick, listen. I’m so—I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to…” he shook his head, exhaustion warring with the incredulity that still hadn’t lifted. “But just for a moment. I need you to forget what I,” he couldn't say it, tried again. “Forget about earlier, just for a second. I have to tell you something, and I swear. I swear, it’s not about that.”

“Harry,” at least the coddling tone was gone, “what are you talking about? What’s not about what?”

“Earlier,” he waved his hand to encompass _earlier_ , as if Nick could have possibly forgotten. “When I went back inside. I was just trying to get out without passing back through the party. I shouldn’t have, there was no reason for me to be in the back rooms, and no one was expecting me. And, um. I saw…” the wall just to the left of Nick’s head was doing an excellent job of holding his interest. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever actually looked at that particular spot on the wall before, but he was certainly well fascinated by it now. “Jamie—” his voice cracked. “Jamie, um. He was back there, yeah? Which I thought was weird at first because at least one of you should be with the guests. So I went over and…”

He was at a loss now, questioning himself. What _had_ he seen? Maybe he had somehow managed to misinterpret this. Or maybe Nick and Jamie had some sort of arrangement, because it’s not like Nick would have told Harry the details (he ignores the part of himself that knows Nick definitely would have, had never met a secret he didn’t share with Harry, and beyond that he ignores that Nick would never marry someone he wasn’t exclusive with, lovable narcissist that he was).

“And _what_ , Harry?” Shit. Nick’s shoulders were tense, and his tone was sharper than Harry had heard in a long time.

He hesitated, “I’m not. I’m not positive,” he was almost pleading now, “but Nick, he was back there with someone and it looked like they…before I came in, that they had been—” he cut himself off, suddenly completely and utterly unable to keep talking.

Nick’s face was doing something complicated, flitting too quickly between emotions for Harry to get a good read on him. He’d always been excellent at making Nick laugh, and he could tell a lot about what Nick was thinking by how he was laughing.

He wasn’t equipped for this.

He watched, silent, as Nick clenched his jaw and closed his eyes briefly, before they shot open again and locked with Harry’s.

“No.”

Harry blinked. “...no?”

“No.” Oh god, anger. Anger was what he hadn’t been able to place. “Whatever you think you saw, you didn’t. You were wrong.”

The thing was, despite having just had the same thought, Harry was suddenly sure that he wasn’t. “Nick,” and now he was the one speaking carefully.

“No, listen. I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but don’t you dare.” Nick was enunciating very clearly, speaking deliberately in a way that somehow made all of this worse.

“I’m not—”

“I cannot _believe_ you,” Nick cut him off. “You said before, ‘I’m not that selfish’, but you know what? What a fucking lie. You are well selfish, and usually it’s endearing, but this is too far. You can’t always have everything that you want, even if you are _Harry Styles_.” Nick all but sneered his name, and Harry flinched back slightly.

He’d known Nick could be a bit vicious, was a master at making people feel however he wanted them to. Harry couldn’t remember having it directed at him like this before though, and they'd known each other for the better part of a decade. A night of firsts, this was.

“Everything I want? You think I wanted this?”

He’d meant to sound reasonable and calming, to diffuse the situation. He just sounded angry.

Shit _._

Nick’s eyes narrowed, “I think you’ve _never_ liked him, that he’s been nothing but lovely to you and you never even made the effort—”

“I made an effort!” Nick scoffed at him. “I did! I liked him fine up until an hour ago when I saw him half dressed with someone who wasn’t _you_.”

Nick completely ignored the last part of his sentence. “Fine! You liked him ‘fine’. You’re meant to be my best friend and you thought he was alright and never bothered to look any further. That was it then, didn't get the grand Harry Styles stamp of approval, no sense investigating any further into why I want to fucking _marry him!_ ”

“I'm sorry,” and even Harry could hear in his tone that, for this at least, he really wasn't. “I was meant to be his best mate too, then? This random bloke who was suddenly a massive part of your life when I got back from tour? Who, by the way, you didn't mention _once_ while I was away. So I was meant to be blindsided by the fact that apparently you weren't waiting anymore, and then turn around and immediately be _besties_? Not all of us pick up new friends as easily as we do new clothes. Sorry we can't all be _Nicholas Grimshaw_.”

There was a second of stunned silence, both of them reeling a bit at everything that had just poured out of his mouth. If only Harry had got that on film, he could have pulled it out next time someone ribbed him for speaking too slowly or taking too long to consider his words.

“You…what? I wasn't _waiting anymore_?” Nick was well and truly angry now, and this was going so badly, fuck. This whole night felt like a nightmare. “You thought we’d _wait for each other_? Is that a joke? Are you joking right now?”

“Nick—” That hadn’t been exactly what he’d meant (or, if we were being technical, he hadn’t meant to say it), but Nick wasn’t waiting for clarification.

“You—? _You_ , Harry Styles, thought we were waiting? What the bloody hell have the past 7 years been, then? What was me having to talk about Taylor and Kendall and Paige and Tess and everyone else on the _fucking radio_ , laughing with Sinead like it was all just so bloody funny _,_ what was—You were waiting? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Horrifyingly, Harry felt a bit like he was going to cry.

“ _You’re_ the one—” he took a breath, “You said you wanted me to have ‘life experiences’, that you didn’t want me to miss my chance to be young and carefree and whatever other rot you could come up with to push me out the door. Don’t…you don’t get to turn this around on me now.”

Harry’s hands were shaking, and he really desperately hoped Nick hadn’t noticed.

“Oh, you think I pulled that out of thin air, do you? That I didn’t see the writing on the wall? What, if we’d kept going when you were eighteen you think we’d still be us? Hell, we wouldn’t even be on speaking terms.”

“How could you possibly know that? We could have been amazing, we almost were.” Nick shook his head. “What happened back then that evidently let you see the future? We’d almost got it figured out, we were so close to being properly together, and I was—”

Nick found his voice, “Not here. You were eighteen and flitting around the planet and you weren’t here. I’m not an idiot, I hear the gossip, ‘Grimmy and his terrible taste in men’, but even I’m not that stupid. You, off being a superstar and summering in LA while I’m sitting here with my dogs wishing you’d come home? Clearly what dreams are made of.”

Harry couldn’t quite believe they were having this fight now when they’d managed to stave it off for so many years, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself either.

“I wouldn’t have—” he stopped, shook his head. “You don’t know that. You don’t know any of that. You’ve just built up this whole worst case scenario in your mind, but you’ve no idea what I would have done—”

“No, I think I do. I wasn’t the only one here that night Harry. I made one comment about you missing out, us maybe being better as friends, and you were one hundred percent on board. No protests, no arguments, and that’s fine, it really is. But let’s not pretend this meant more to you than it did.”

 _Let’s not pretend_ —Harry had so many objections to that that he was having trouble gathering himself enough to begin.

“Grim…” he started, failing rather spectacularly at keeping the incredulity out of his voice.

Nick didn’t give him the chance to go on. “I don’t know what changed, or when, but let’s not rewrite history here. You thought it was for the best.”

“I didn’t…for the _best_?”

“That’s what you said! You said ‘maybe you’re right, maybe it would be better’, which, _as I’ve just said_ , I fully understood! You were eighteen and a superstar and you didn’t need someone a decade older holding you back—”

“That’s not—I didn’t mean for me! I meant better for _you_. You do remember what it was like back then? The press was having a field day, hounding you, dragging you through the mud right when you were starting Breakfast and needed it the least.” Harry was running out of steam to argue. His anger had passed as quickly as it had come, and he was back to just feeling drained. “Nick, I meant you deserved better than what we were doing back then. And you did. You do. That was absolute madness from all sides. But this? With Jamie? This isn’t better.”

Nick looked a bit like he had sagged as well, the fight sinking out of his posture.

What a pair they were, on a night meant to be a celebration.

“You don't understand. Jamie wouldn’t—he promised, he _promised_ me that would never happen again. He—” Nick’s voice cut out.

And Harry had thought he was incredulous before. “Grim,” he started slowly, tentatively, “has this...has this happened before?”

Nick wouldn’t meet his eyes. “He wouldn’t do this. Not now, not right before…” He trailed off.

“I know I don’t know him all that well—”

Nick cut him off, “No, you don’t. You don’t know him. You never tried to know him,” and this was clearly a sticking point, because Nick’s voice was getting louder again, “and this was the man I was going to _marry_ —” Nick abruptly cut himself off, both of them frozen at the use of the past tense.

The silence stretched for a small eternity.

“God,” Nick whispered, and Harry wished he hadn’t been able to hear how his voice had wavered. “No…this, this can’t—things were finally working out. My life was finally working out. Am I just—defective? Like, not meant to have this with anyone? How is it that I _always_ —” his voice broke, and Harry was abruptly furious. Completely and totally coldly furious.

Nick was always laughing. He laughed at comedy, he made people laugh in the face of tragedy, and he made himself the butt of the joke all the fucking time. Right now though he looked like he was about to crumble, and Jamie had done this.

He forced his jaw to unclench, pushed it down. The last thing Nick needed right now was to have to start comforting Harry, of all things.

“C’mon, let’s…let's sit down.” He took Nick’s wrist and pulled a bit until they were wandering into the sitting room, sinking down on the sofa.

Harry sent a silent thank you to anyone who was listening that he'd ignored the designer and gone for comfort when he picked the furniture for this room. Nick was still curled into himself a bit, but his shoulders couldn’t seem to help but inch down as he leaned back into the cushions.

They sat silently for what could have been either five minutes or five years, for all that Harry could tell at that point.

It would have been a truly fantastic moment for him to spontaneously become as cool and self-assured as everyone always seemed to believe, because in reality Harry wasn’t sure he’d ever been quite this completely and wildly unprepared for anything.

He was so wrapped up in his head that Nick’s voice startled him, soft as it was.

“God, I'm not—I'm not going to get,” Nick seemed to be in a bit of a daze. “What am I even going to _do_? I can't—it's meant to be tomorrow. I'm supposed to be picking up my tux, and, and there's flowers coming and we've paid for catering and what, do we just…how do you even cancel a venue like that, it's not like anyone owns the park. Who do I even…do I return the permit? I mean, it's half ten on a Friday night, there's no one to, to call or—do I _email_ someone? Is that—”

Harry couldn’t stand it anymore, had to get himself together and stop this from spinning any further.

“I think…I think that you have a glass of wine. A _bottle_ of wine, and then you go to bed, and tomorrow it'll be…not better, but maybe less—” he couldn't think of how he’d meant to finish that sentence. “Actually, it'll probably be worse.” Nick laughed, startled, and it didn't sound particularly joyful, but he also didn't sound quite so lost. Harry decided he was going to take his victories where he could get them. “But you don't have to do any of that. I'll…call in reinforcements, and we’ll handle it.” He paused, and wished with every fibre of his being that he didn't have to go on. “Most of it.”

Nick stared a bit blankly, and what a moment for him to not intuitively understand what Harry was trying to say.

“You’ll have to…call, or, or go see—you'll have to talk to Jamie, Nick.”

Nick looked like that hadn’t occurred to him yet, and Harry _hated this_. “God, you're right. Course I'll have to, he doesn't even—”

Nick didn't seem to want to go on, and Harry let the silence stretch while he steeled himself for the question that he'd never forgive himself if he didn't ask.

Because Nick was upset, and he had every right to be, obviously, but they’d been together for two years. Nick clearly loved him.

“Grim,” he swallowed, “before you do. Are you…are you sure?” Nick turned to him, looking more than a little incredulous. He hurried on, “I mean, obviously you'd need to…to address this, but. You could, y’know, you should…do what you like. Don't let,” he stumbled a bit—me, don't let me—“anyone push you somewhere you don't…want to go. If you think he’s, like, _it_ for you. And it would make you happy to work it out, then…then fuck everyone else, who cares what they think? We could just postpone, or…” he trailed off, slightly astounded that he'd somehow ended up arguing in favour of Jamie, and yet not really disagreeing with anything he'd just said.

Honestly, this fucking night.

Nick, for his part, was pressing his lips together so tightly they were turning white, and slowly shaking his head. “No,” he croaked, cleared his throat, “no. We—I tried that. We ‘worked on it’ and I thought,” a pause, where Nick shook his head again. “Doesn't matter. Obviously I—” he blew out a frustrated breath, ran his fingers through his quiff. “It was right at the beginning, when we thought we'd try being exclusive. We had different working definitions, apparently, but we—that was ages ago. We, I mean, we agreed—” he broke off, bringing a hand up to press over his mouth for a minute. “No. There's no way. I can't. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…”

 _Shame on me_ , Harry finished in his head. He figured the relief spreading through what felt like his entire body probably made him a bad person.

“Right,” Harry nodded. He could do this. “Right. Okay. I'm going to call Gem, and Aimee, and Emily, and…and Fiona, and Gellz, and Henry, and Pixie and we’ll—we’ll sort this.”

Nick had his face in his hands, kneaded the tips of his fingers into his forehead and then moved them down to press against the corners of his eyes.

He lifted his head, glanced at Harry briefly, “I'm meant to be going to Spain.”

“We’ll sort that, too.”

“No, you don't—I'm not going to go, and everyone is going to know why. I'm going to have to,” he closed his eyes. “I'm going to have to tell 5 million people.”

Harry wanted to argue, to reassure him, but of course he was right.

Nick wasn't done, “And I'm not going to be able to explain, not the real story, and everyone is going to think it was me. That I backed out. There are going to be cheating rumours, of course there will be, and they're all going to be about me.”

God.

Harry would give up a lot to be able to tell him he was wrong. He licked his lips, cast around for something, _anything_ , to say, and came up blank.

He was right. The world was shit, the celebrity gossip world especially, and he was right. There were a lot of things Harry didn't like feeling, but helplessness was maybe the worst.

Nick’s hands were the ones shaking slightly now, and Harry grabbed the one closest to him and held on so tightly it probably verged on painful.

Nick wasn't complaining, squeezed back just as hard.

It was good, grounding, but it wasn't enough.

Harry scrambled to get his knees under him on the sofa, forever awkward the moment he wasn't in front of a crowd, and turned so they pressed against the side of Nick's thigh. He disentangled his hand and wrapped both arms around Nick’s shoulders.

Nick huffed out a laugh, and Harry didn't blame him—he probably looked absolutely ridiculous—but he didn't move, and Nick laid his head to the side, resting it on Harry’s chest, so he figured it had been the right call.

His foot started to fall asleep after a while, but Harry didn't budge. At least something was going to get some rest tonight.

Eventually Nick sighed, straightened up. “Right. I'm going to—” he waved his hand in the direction of the guest room, the one he always used when he slept over. Gone were the days of the two of them crashing in the master suite, telly on and lying half on top of each other.

Harry was hit with a sudden wave of sorrow-longing-jealousy and he wanted to reach back in time and shake is twenty-three year old self, the one who’d finally got that back and stupidly thought it would last forever. _Do something! Stop assuming he’ll press pause on his life when you're not here!_

He shook himself, “Course. D’you…need anything?” He paused, “Pyjamas? Toothbrush?” Another pause, “Xanax?” He asked, half-jokingly.

Nick smiled, small but decently genuine, though he couldn't keep it up for long. “Nah. ‘M alright. I'm just going to—” It was the second time he had cut off in the middle of that sentence, but he gestured to his phone and this time Harry understood.

God.

Just going to call Jamie and irrevocably change the course of his life.

Harry nodded, attempted to force his expression into literally anything except relief.

“Let me know if…” he trailed off, gestured vaguely in a what's-mine-is-yours offer.

“Yeah, I will. Thanks, Haz.”

And then he was gone, and it was Harry's turn to spend a minute with his head in his hands.

Right. _Get it together, Styles._ He couldn’t afford to be off his game, not for the next few hours at least. He took out his phone and took a few deep breaths.

Right.

 

.

 

By the third time someone asked if he was alright, Nick’s smile was looking more forced than he might have hoped, and his “Absolutely! Cheers, thanks for asking!” was verging closer and closer to pure sarcasm.

By the tenth, he’d given up on verbal responses, and was just nodding and vaguely smiling.

By the thirtieth, he was considering reintroducing verbal responses, namely in the form of screaming.

And it’s not even that he was lying, because he weirdly did feel fine. He’d had that bottle of wine, he’d crawled into bed with Aimee and had her listen as he moaned over dramatically and cathartically about being alone until he died a lonely and painful death, _alone_. He’d gone out for drinks with George, who had attempted to be a lad and slapped him on the back and bought him multiple pints and just generally been a good friend.

The two weeks had felt like a proper vacation, despite not being in quite the locale he had expected, and if the only times he’d really spoken to anyone was when they’d explicitly come to him? Well. He felt he could be forgiven, under the circumstances.

Somehow even the public announcement hadn’t really got to him, though that might have been because he’d made it that morning in the same way he made all serious announcements: jokingly, and massively played-down.

 

_“So, how was your weekend? What were you up to?”_

_“It was good, yeah! I was mainly just sleeping if we’re honest, ran some errands.” Fiona had paused, pulled a panicked face at him across the studio, but he waved her on, resigned. “I’m a little hesitant to ask about your hols?”_

_“Ah, yes, the massive elephant in the room._ Very _inconvenient, taking up most of the studio, good of you to get it out of the way,” he laughed, probably a little bit too loudly, but, you know, allowances had to be made. “So, yes, I didn’t get married. All very tragic, Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers passing in the night, never to be united, torn apart by fate,” he dropped the over dramatic narration for a minute, “or, you know, we just decided it wasn’t going to work and thought it was better to call it off_ before _walking down the aisle. But anyways! Yes, it’s back to me, and my dogs, and hoping to win as many Bachelor of the Year awards as possible before I die a wretched and lonely death_ —”

“ _Romeo and Juliet?_ ” _She asked incredulously, but she was smiling, and he liked the think she looked proud._

_“That’s what you took away from that?”_

_“You just went full Shakespearean, and I was meant to be concentrating on the rest?”_

_“Alright,” he was excellent at the faux put-upon tone, “let’s just play a song, shall we? Honestly, the_ ridicule _I endure at your hand, Fifi. Terrible. Anyways, not sure how anyone is going to be satisfied with music after being wowed by my dramatic retelling, but on the off chance anyone is still interested in the music part of this music program, the next three songs are going to sound like this!”_

 

To be honest, he still thought that it had gone the best it could have.

The tweets and DMs and instagram comments that had immediately flooded every social media platform he used? Those he admittedly could have done without.

On the bright side, they’d screened the music takeover callers well, and Andy from Surrey couldn’t have cared less about Nick’s personal life. That would have been all he needed, someone yelling that he deserved what he got live on the air. He’d had nightmares that started like that, and it all felt a little too plausible right now.

He was done for the day though, and he’d already been to the gym. His trainer had even been impressed by how hard he’d been pushing himself. (Nick carefully wasn’t examining the _why_ too closely on that one.)

All in all, the first morning back could have gone a lot worse.

He’d remembered to bring his keys from the BBC, which was a nice change from that day a few weeks ago—and hadn’t that been fun, phoning what felt like his entire friend circle until someone had been free to come by with their key to unlock his house—his car hadn’t broken down, and he hadn't had any tragic traffic incidents on the way home.

So, of course, he got the door unlocked, walked into his house, and promptly almost had a heart attack.

“Jesus! What are you doing sitting here by yourself in the dark?”

Nick’s heart was beating way too quickly, and admittedly it wasn’t exactly _dark_ , but the door had been locked and he’d been expecting at most his dogs, provided they could tear themselves away from their beds long enough to come greet him.

“It’s the middle of the day,” Harry didn’t even have the grace to look apologetic, sounding far too amused for the situation.

“It’s still—there are no lights on! This is my house!”

Harry raised an eyebrow, “Is it? I _knew_ there was something different about this sitting room.”

Nick shook his head, but couldn’t quite keep a smile from spreading across his face. “Let me rephrase. Why are you, at this specific moment, sitting on my sofa?”

Harry had been smiling too, but his face went serious at that. Not the best sign.

“Aimee says you’re not leaving the house.”

Aimee had—Nick was galled.

“I’m _leaving the house_!” he spluttered, “I’ve been to work, I’ve gone to get milk.” He would have gone on, but he was suddenly drawing a blank on other things that he’d done. Not that he should have had to keep some sort of list! Honestly, betrayal from all sides.  

“Well, so long as you’ve got milk.”

The searching gaze that he swept over Nick, as if he were trying to get a read on his emotional state or katra or possibly soul—who even knew with Harry—rather lessened the effect of his joking.

Nick tried to school his expression into one that said totally-emotionally-put-together-but-not- _quite_ -put-together-enough-to-talk-about-it. He wasn’t sure how well he succeeded.

Damn Harry and his sincerity and his worried eyes and his _face._

“I’m fine, Harry.”

“Sure,” Harry said easily. “It’s just…I was trying to give you space. I thought—I thought you probably didn’t need me hovering. But then it occurred to me that maybe me not being here was going to be more like…abandonment in your time of need? Which is not what I intended. So…” he trailed off. “Hi,” he finished, smiling sheepishly.

Nick’s involuntary smile was back. “Hi,” he rejoined, sinking onto the other side of the sofa. “I really am fine though.”

Harry didn’t say anything.

“I mean, I’ve probably been better, but nothing is actually wrong? Plus, I’m the one who called it all off, so it’s not as though I really have any right to be crying about it now—”

“You do, though.” Nick looked over at him, “You have every right.”

Nick shook his head, not so much disagreeing with the sentiment as with the implication that he should be upset. He was _fine_. “No, really. I’m good. I’m doing well. I’ve been to the gym and I went into work and I did the show and it all went well. And I’ve got good guests coming on this week, so I’ve been prepping for that. I haven’t really even had time to think about,” he cleared his throat. “About, you know, everything.”

Which was, of course, a blatant lie, but it was something he wished were true, so that had to count for something.

Harry bit his bottom lip. “Right. Well, that’s…good.”

Nick snorted.

“Hey,” and if he ever failed to draw out the ‘y’, Nick would know he’d been replaced by some sort of automaton. “No, I mean it. That’s brilliant, I’m glad work’s been good.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“No, no ‘but’,” he paused, and Nick waited him out. “It’s just—”

“Ah ha! Here we go—”

Harry laughed, “No! It’s just…it’s okay if you’re not. Fine, I mean.” Another pause, and the laughter was gone from his voice when he continued. “I think…you’re allowed to feel sad or betrayed or…or angry, or lost, or whatever. You deserve the chance to feel whatever you need to feel. For as long as you need to.”

And that, Nick thought, was the difference between him and Harry.

Because Harry truly meant that, meant that he was deserving in a good way, but honestly Nick couldn’t think of anything worse. A reaction like that was everything he was trying to avoid, everything that he so far was successfully not feeling. Maybe this was just the calm before the storm, and whatever numbness he was relying on would wear off and leave him raw, but either way, a reaction meant he’d lost.

Not that anyone had necessarily won in this scenario, but he refused to lose.   

He blew out a breath, “Harry, right now I’m just—I’ll let you know, alright? If I get sad or angry or whatever. But right now, I’m…” In truth, he had no idea what he was, but Harry was nodding, so clearly he’d taken something from that.

“Yeah.”

It was quiet for a while, before Harry opened his mouth, shut it again, and pressed his steepled fingers to his mouth.

And Nick wasn’t amazing at reading body language, but even he knew that one. “Alright, out with it.”

Harry looked up in surprise, “What?”

“Whatever it is that’s got you doing your best impression of a fish, out with it.”

At least Harry smiled then, but the crease that had formed between his eyebrows didn’t smooth out. He took a breath deep enough that Nick watched his chest expand to almost double its normal size. Singers, honestly.

“I heard you, on the radio this morning.” Harry paused, “Talking about the elephant in the room. And Nick,” a breath, “the night of your party. I—” Oh god, Nick should have seen this coming. Harry always had been stupidly brave. “I just…wanted to explain. I know this is a terrible time, but it’s just going to keep being a worse one the longer I don’t…” he ran a hand through his hair, and Nick tracked its progress with his eyes.

Easier than looking Harry in the face right now.

Harry visibly gathered himself, started again, “I just want to explain. Because, Grim, you have to know, the _last_ thing I wanted was to ruin anything. I just, I thought Gemma was going to come after me, and the door opened, and…I thought you were Gemma.” Nick believed him, had never thought otherwise. “And even then, I was going to tell her that—that we’re older now, and you want a _partner_ , someone who can commit to the White Picket Fence,” his capitalization was audible, “and so it didn’t…it didn’t matter, what I—” Another deep breath. “It didn’t matter. And I’m just…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hide anything from you, or spring anything on you, or…or any of that. It just,” he shook his head, “I didn’t tell you, because you’re, y’know, ready now, and I’m…I’m not sure I am, so.” He glanced up towards the ceiling and back down again, licked his lips. “So, it didn’t matter,” he finished.     

Their eyes locked for a long second, and—highly unusually—it was Harry who looked away first.

Nick felt a bit unmoored, but, “It’s okay Haz, really. That was,” he laughed involuntarily, “that was quite the night, but honestly, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

“Yeah?” Harry sounded hopeful.

And really, what had he thought Nick was going to say? “Yeah, course.”

“‘Cause you’re…you’re my best friend. And I want to be there for you right now, and I don’t want you to think I’m—”

“I don’t. Harry, I promise you, whatever it is you think I might suspect you of, I don’t.”

Harry smiled, small and genuine, and Nick had just put that look on his face.

His voice took on a teasing lilt, “Also, I’m your best friend? Don’t let that get out, I’ll have three very jealous ex-boy band members out for my blood, nevermind a manager and guitarist—”

The smile grew, but his tone was serious, “Of course you are. You always have been.”

Nick had been trying to lighten the mood, and now he felt a bit like he was going to cry. _Dammit_ Harry. He felt like the Grinch, like his heart had grown three sizes that day.

He wanted to keep that feeling forever, didn’t want to do anything to ruin the peace that had settled over the room.

He wanted to let the whole topic of That Night (it had taken on mythic levels of horror in Nick’s mind, he was debating taking out a trademark) go, to move on as quickly as possible, and yet—he needed to know.

“Harry, about that night. I know we were both tired and a bit drunk and I, for one, was not at my best—I’m sorry about that, by the way,” Harry waved him off, gestured for him to go on. “But,” he paused. Last chance to shove it under the rug with the rest of his emotionally difficult musings. He went on, “what you said about waiting…”

Harry shook his head, made a noise in the back of his throat. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to put that on you, that was…obviously I wasn’t at my best either.”  

“No, that’s not—it’s fine, honestly. I just.” He took yet another deep breath. He’d probably never been more oxygenated, was practically doing yoga at this point. “Did you really think that? That it would be us one day?”

There was a long silence, and Harry really must have the X factor, or maybe he was literally magical, because with anyone else it would have been painfully awkward.

Harry bit his bottom lip, and his voice was quiet when he finally spoke, “Didn’t you?”

Which.

Nick swallowed. _Yes_ , his mind screamed. Yes, but then I woke up in reality. He cleared his throat, “Yeah, I—at one point. Yeah.”

Harry nodded, moved a bit closer so that their thighs were almost touching, and leaned his head against Nick’s shoulder. Nick relaxed—when had he gotten so tense?—and lay back into the cushions.

It was a while before Harry spoke, “You’re going to be alright, you know? It’s okay if you’re not right now, but you will be.”

Nick blew out a slow breath, let his eyes fall shut.

That was the thing about Harry. He said something, and you believed him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I will be.”

 

.

 

Truthfully, when Harry had said _I want to be there for you_ , even he hadn’t quite foreseen this.

It was just, he was working on the album, but he was recording in London this time, and when he was done for the day it made sense to stop by.

Aimee hadn’t been wrong, for all Nick’s whinging about slander and betrayal, and if it took someone coming by to get Nick out and about for something other than work, well. That was a mantle Harry was willing to take up.

So they went for lunches and dinners and to the gym and Harry tagged along to some of Nick’s gigs, and it wasn’t as though they hadn’t been seeing each other before, they’d been good friends, but—it had been a month at this point, and Harry had a toothbrush sitting in the cup on Nick’s sink.

He hadn’t had a toothbrush at Nick’s place since the early days of the Primrose Hill flat.

It was maybe weird, how easy it was to fall back into their old habits, how right it felt, but Harry wasn’t in the habit of questioning the good things in his life too closely. And it wasn’t entirely unexpected. They’d always been like this, him and Nick, had felt like they’d known each other their whole lives right from the first moment they’d met.

They hadn’t lost it, exactly, but Harry remembered very clearly the feeling of being back in London after wrapping up his tour in LA that summer, showing up at Nick’s and having Jamie answer the door.

At that point Harry hadn’t had any reason to dislike him, _hadn’t_ disliked him, in fact—he’d been nice, attempting to include Harry in conversation and cooking dinner for the three of them—but they’d had inside jokes, Jamie and Nick, and it had taken a lot of effort for Harry to keep the smile fixed on his face.

Nick had gotten drunk at some party once and wrapped an arm around Harry’s side, smiled at him and slurred, “I just…I want you to know,” he hiccupped, “I’m worried that you think I can only have one best friend, and I just,” he hadn’t gone on, just wrapped his other arm around Harry and squeezed very tightly, ruffling his hair. And Harry had smiled, assured him that everything was good, he didn’t feel at all abandoned or anything like that, but his eyes had misted the moment Nick looked away.

Because…because you couldn’t have more than one best friend. By definition, you had one most important person.

And maybe it had been a while since Harry was Nick’s first phone call, whenever something went right or wrong or he just wanted to talk. Maybe it had been Emily or Aimee or Fiona or one of a million other people at that point, but at least he hadn’t known for sure.

Knowing for sure had been hard.

It astounded him a bit, that he was fairly sure he _was_ the first call again, or at least top three. That he’d actually got that back. He hated to feel glad about any part of this, because it was all awful and Nick was hurt beyond what Harry could really understand—he’d had break-ups, of course, but they hadn’t been like that, had always been more of a drifting than an explosion—but he also didn’t like to delude himself. He’d shot back up to _go-to_ status, and he was fiercely, deeply pleased.

Niall had sent him a string of smirking emojis and a link to an article the other day, titled _THEY’RE GOING TO PARTY LIKE IT’S 2012: HARRY AND GRIMMY HAVE US DOUBLE CHECKING OUR CALENDARS_. The headline was followed by what Harry thought was an excessive number of pictures of the two of them from the past little while, ranging from blurry cellphone shots to pap pictures of them stumbling out of Groucho and Shoreditch.

He hadn’t read the actual article, made it a habit not to, but there were enough pictures of him leaving Nick’s place at all hours of the day and night that he was fairly sure he knew what conclusions people were drawing.

They were wrong, of course, but he knew how it looked.

He didn’t mind so much for himself, because honestly if there was an unflattering article being written in the gossip rags about his love life then it must have been a day that ended in ‘y’, but he was a bit worried about Nick. At least people weren’t going for the pedophelic lens this time—because hadn’t that just been lovely—but evidently it would be a cold day in hell before the predatory-older-gay-man angle lost it’s shine. Add that onto the ‘ _moving on so quickly, are we?’_ narrative, and it wasn’t pretty. Nick hadn't said anything about it yet, hadn't asked him to take a step back or anything, but Harry figured it had to be getting to him.

And people were writing articles about how we didn’t need Pride anymore, opinion pieces about how we’d achieved equality. Fucking ridiculous.

Gemma was furious at the coverage, had been ranting on the phone to him about homophobia and feminization and the derision that accompanied it, segued into the generational disconnect in the UK and the world at large, and the problems it was causing in politics, social and otherwise.

It was amazing how his sister could make him simultaneously feel so proud and uneducated and inarticulate and like she deserved the world.

He’d tried to condense that feeling into a song, but so far was coming up short. Everything was either too wistful or, in Jeff’s words, _if you wanted to write Girl Almighty, you should have done it before your writers did_.

Overall though, the album was going fairly well. They had a few songs done, Mitch continued to be incredible and possibly the best writing partner he could have ever dreamed of, and together his band had managed to make the third album seem like less of an insurmountable obstacle. Plus, they had months still. The album didn’t need to be finalized for a while yet. Not that they had to stick to the schedule even then, but Harry had always liked plans.

He’d sketched it out with Jeff a couple weeks ago and, barring any unforeseen obstacles, he figured it was reasonable. Album done in a few months, prepare for a couple months after that, drop a single and do the promo rounds, then tour the album starting about four months later. He could manage that.

And if the schedule he'd made lined up so that he was going to be in London with Nick for the next six months or so, just while the wound was fresh?

Well, what could he say.

Sometimes fate was kind like that.

 

.

 

“Do you think I should—”

“No.”

“Wh—You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“ _No._ ”

“Ducky—”

“Don’t you ‘Ducky’, me. I lived with you for two years. You are not an arbitrary advice seeker. You’re not sure if you want avocado on your sandwich? You make a decision on your own, which, obviously you want avocado, and then you put it on your sandwich. You’re not sure if there’s enough product in your hair? You stare at yourself in the mirror until you decide whether or not you’re the fairest of them all, no input sought from me. You’re completely and totally aware that you shouldn’t call your ex, but you don’t like the conclusion you’ve reached? _Well_ , suddenly it’s ‘ _ooh, I’m not sure, what do you think Emily, my trusted advisor, there’s just so much to consider_ —’”

“For the record,” Nick figured his outrage probably would have been a tad more believable if he’d been able to keep a straight face, “I strongly object to that characterization, and I’m deeply wounded by your rush to judgement.” Emily took a giant bite of salad, raised her eyebrows. The minuscule table outside the cafe where they were sat—allegedly built for two people but in reality struggling to hold a pitcher and two salad bowls—was not exactly where he’d imagined having this conversation. “But on the off chance that you weren’t _entirely_ wrong on the subject matter…”

She snorted, brought a hand up to cover her mouth briefly before she swallowed.

“ _Grim._ ”

“But don’t you—”

“Nicholas, I am not joking. Delete all his pics and block his number from your phone.”

“Are you quoting Little Mix lyrics at me? Is that what’s happening right now?”

Emily sniffed, poured herself more iced tea, “What can I say, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

 

.

 

Nick didn’t delete all his pictures.

(What would he have scrolled through, on the all-too-frequent nights he was feeling nostalgic, missing his life from six months ago and revelling in unhealthy coping mechanisms?)

 

.

 

Harry let himself in the front door, “Grim?”

Nick didn’t respond, which was a bit odd, considering that it had been him who’d texted Harry this time, seeing if they could just stay in and watch telly instead of going out for their tea.

He’d said he was tired, and Harry didn’t doubt that he was, but he also couldn’t remember the last time being tired had stopped Nick from doing literally anything he wanted to do. It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to assume he just didn’t want a repeat of last night, being asked to take picture after picture of fans with Harry.

Honestly, Harry didn’t blame him.

He’d never really minded being stopped wherever he went, even at the height of the One Direction days. It hadn’t got to him, not like it had Louis or Niall. He loved the crowds, loved the fans, and he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t still a bit of a thrill, having so many people constantly in awe.

Last night though? Watching Nick’s already brittle smile deteriorate even further every time someone came up to them and gushed over Harry, had a look on their face that said they wished Nick weren’t there, that he was an inconvenience, but asked if maybe he could step back and snap a quick picture for them?

Harry probably wouldn’t have actually traded in the last nine years of his life to avoid that, but it would have been a close call.

He figured the least he owed Nick was a night in eating curry and watching crap telly.

He got his boots off, take away in one hand, and wandered into the living room.

Nick was there, right within earshot, and Harry couldn’t figure out what he was doing, sitting there frozen and staring at the wall. He had his phone out, but it was just resting on his thigh, screen gone dark, and his eyes were locked on a specific spot.

He opened his mouth to ask what was going on, why a blank patch of wall was taking all of Nick’s focus, but froze at the last second, because…

Oh.

Fuck.

That wall hadn’t used to be blank.

That wall had had a picture hung on it, a rather large one actually, of Nick and Jamie laughing, done in black and white, and in what was clearly an expensive frame. Nick had loved that picture, asked multiple times if Harry could believe it, that he actually looked human for once, and devolved each time into a speech on the plight of the non-photogenic.

Harry had rolled his eyes—because really, he could count the number of times Nick had taken a bad picture on one hand, and even then those had been on purpose—but he had to admit, it had been a really excellent shot.

Harry couldn’t remember when it had come down.

Had Jamie taken it when he’d left, jamming it into one of the million boxes he’d packed so methodically?

“Nick…”

Which finally got him to turn towards Harry, not startled but still as if he hadn’t quite expected him. Nick laughed a bit hollowly, “I just—” he shook his head. “It’s like… _barren_ in here. There are all these gaps, on the shelves. And I opened a drawer earlier, in my dresser. Empty. Nowt. It’s—what did I used to use all this space for? Obviously it wasn’t…” he trailed off.

Harry had always thought that people were speaking figuratively, when they said their heart was aching for someone. This was a fully fledged physical sensation though, almost like a burning in his throat, or something pressing down on his chest. _Nick._

“I keep thinking maybe I should just sell it. The house, I mean. Fresh start, y’know? But then, I—I love this place. This is the first proper house I’ve ever had, and what, I’m going to let myself essentially be kicked out of it?”

Harry set the curry down on the table, took the seat next to Nick and leaned into him briefly, trying and probably failing to deliver comfort through touch, “Course not, if you don’t want to. Maybe…maybe we could just, like—redecorate? New throw pillows and end tables and bedding, and, and…” The white spaces where there used to be photographs or paintings probably weren't doing Nick any favours, “something new to put on the wall?”

Nick hummed in agreement at that.

“I was thinking I might hang your sign, actually,” he said musingly, and Harry felt the words like they had been shot through him. Nick didn’t even glance his way though, was still staring at the gap on the wall, and he very obviously hadn’t meant anything by that. He hadn’t been implying anything that Harry’s subconscious wanted him to believe, anything about a deeper meaning or how that sign had been a promise, way back when. Nick needed a friend and Harry needed to get himself the fuck under control. “I like the message. Feel a bit like—” he cut off, glanced at Harry and laughed a bit sardonically, “like I could use the reminder. Dunno what’s wrong with me. One second I’m absolutely fine, and the next,” he made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.

“There’s nothing…” Harry had to swallow, push down a strange mixture of the urge to cry, fury at Jamie, and the desire to wrap Nick in a hug and not let go until he wasn’t sad anymore, “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.” He caught Nick’s eye, “No one’s ever been more…er, less wrong.” He made a face. How articulate. Nick lips turned up a bit though, and Harry would have done a lot more to get any sort of smile on his face. “But I mean, yeah. Let’s hang it up. I love that sign, no sense letting it sit in a box. It’s meant,” Harry could feel his own grin starting, “y’know, to be _enjoyed_.”

Nick’s smile grew, “Oh piss off. Next you’ll be telling me that I should live my life in _full neon colour_.”

“That’s not bad! I was searching for a neon pun but I couldn’t think of anything!”

“Yes, my life’s greatest accomplishment. Used the word neon, badly, in a sentence. Please queue up in an orderly fashion, I’m here all week, there’s really no need to push and shove.”

Harry laughed, partly at what Nick was saying, but mainly out of joy.

Nick was smiling.

He was _smiling_.

“Anyways, the human eighth wonder of the world would like some food now, if you please.”

Harry levered himself up off the sofa, grabbed the bag off the coffee table, “Pushy, pushy. Such a demanding landmark, should have gone to hang out with the pyramids.”

He sat back down, figured they could just eat where they were. Really, so what if they spilled tikka masala on the cushions? All the more reason to have them recovered.

Fresh start, step one of a million.

“Ah, but would the pyramids have forced you to sit through their entire backlog of X Factor episodes? You think about _that_.” Nick used the hand that wasn’t full of takeaway to make a finger gun in his direction, and Harry couldn’t have been more thrilled.

He purposefully furrowed his eyebrows, “Not sure if you meant that to be a positive, or…”

“Hush now, episode starting!” Nick shoved a bite of chicken into his mouth cover his smirk, and Harry saw right through him.

He didn’t even make a comment about the Narcissism Club the two of them could have started, spending their time watching X Factor, of all things. (At least it wasn’t either of their series’.)

He’d have liked to, could probably have made a fairly good argument as to why they should watch literally anything else, but he just…couldn’t quite muster the outrage.

Truthfully, he was a bit scared to even move too suddenly, lest anything disturb the smile on Nick’s face. It was real—an actual genuine smile—and Harry wanted it to stay forever, for Nick to literally never let it fall. Perhaps not the most realistic wish, but Harry figured he at least had the chance to prolong it, if he ate his food and watched telly and tried not to cry at the stories that he _knew_ were manufactured about how this was someone’s dream, despite all the obstacles they’d faced along the way.

So he crossed his legs, ate his food, and absolutely cried at all the stories that he knew were manufactured about how this was someone’s dream.

 

.

 

“We’re going out.”

“What?”

“We’re going out! It’s been way too long, and _my god_ babe this is getting depressing, so the two of us are getting all dressed up in the least posh, most drool-worthy outfits we can find and we’re going out.”

“ _Ohmagodbabe_ , it has not been way too long. I was out literally two nights ago—”

Rita had her finger pointed straight at him, “Mock all you’d like, but _ohmagodbabe_ , you were out with Harry, and bless his soul but that boy is too soft a touch to force you into the true palate cleansing you need.”

Nick could feel his face trying to decide between amusement and oh-dear-god, “Palate cleansing?” he ventured.

She was firm. “Palate cleansing.”

A pause.

“As in…” he trailed off.

Rita, bless her brazen and amazing self, did not. “ _As in_ , you were in a committed relationship for two years and now you’re not, and you’re fabulous and successful and fit and we’re going to pull. So! Up and at ‘em, and if I never see the elastic waistband shorts you’re currently wearing again, it’ll be too soon.”

He hesitated.

“Go!”

Nick went.

 

.

 

The hangover didn’t actually stretch for two full weeks, but it was a close thing.

(Admittedly, though. Success.)

 

.

 

“I’m fine, really.”

The corner of Michael’s mouth twitched up the slightest bit, and his eyes were fond. “Course you are. You’re Nick Grimshaw.”

Nick swallowed, and his voice wasn’t quite as steady when he continued, “It’s just…this whole thing has been—”

He cut off, bent down to scratch behind Pig’s ears and throw her the ball.

“Should I go threaten to fuck him up? I’ve got the,” Nick glanced up in time to see him gesture up from his chest to his face, back down again. “Might be more intimidating than a rockstar who looks like a renaissance painting or a blonde popstar, her killer lipstick aside.”

Nick’s smile was involuntary, because really, what an image.

“Nah,” he waved his hand, cleared his throat. “Best keep your pacifist streak going as long as possible.” He looked down at Pig for a long minute, debated reattaching her lead before deciding against it. “Thanks, though.”

Michael didn’t say anything, just nodded and was looking over at where Stinky had run off to by the time Nick straightened out of his crouch.

The breeze blew by, ruffled his hair a bit, and Nick blew out a slow breath.

Today had been good.

The show had gone well, and it was sunny, and he was in the park with his dogs and an ex that had come all the way down from Manchester, was offering to go and likely fail spectacularly at threatening another ex on his behalf even though it had been over two months since the almost-wedding.

Today had been good.

 

.

 

The same could not quite be said of the following weekend.

Nick’s hands were shaking, and he probably shouldn’t have had that last drink.

He still knew this number by heart, though, got it into his phone on the first try. A voice in his head that sounded a lot like Aimee was telling him to hang up, that he wasn’t going to want to have made this call when he woke up in the morning, but his fingers were still dialling, his phone was ringing, and then when it went to voicemail, his voice was pouring out largely without his permission.

“You didn’t—you spent so long packing but you didn’t get everything.” He was almost yelling. “You didn’t, because I keep _finding things_ and I don’t know if you just didn’t see them, or if you didn’t want them anymore, or if you just left them here as some sort of awful scavenger hunt, or…” he ran his fingers through his hair roughly, “but congratulations, I guess. You win, I lose, you’re fine and I’m here and you can go off with whatever-his-name-is or anybody else in the whole fucking world apparently, and I’m at home _missing you_. And it doesn’t stop, I find a pair of your bloody socks or summat and there’s all my healing or moving on or whatever gone, and I’m just here. Obsessing about a boy. And _Jesus fucking Christ,_ what a cliché. What a— _fuck._ ”

His face was crumpling, and he couldn’t seem to grit his teeth hard enough to force his chin steady. He hung up, dropped his phone as he clasped a hand over his mouth in a rather futile attempt to pull himself together, and only realised that he was blocking both his airways when he had to pull in a gasping breath.

Hell.

On the list of things he probably shouldn’t have done.

Bloody fucking—

_Fuck._

 

.

 

Harry took one look at his instagram feed and decided that he suddenly did in fact have plans for the day.

Because beautiful though it was, the Rupi Kaur poem that was staring back at him from under **nicholasgrimshaw** with the caption _“wise words”_? Was not the best sign.  


  
Christ.

He’d been over the day before and Nick had seemed fine, laughing at some Masterchef rerun and talking about how he was going to go for a run later, try once again to convince Stinky that he wanted to run alongside with him. Harry had had his doubts, but maybe seventeenth time was the charm, so he’d left him to it.

Clearly he should have stayed, if the poem and the text he’d woken up to that said _“You don’t think it’s possible to miss someone more because you’re burning a candle they bought you, do you?”_ were any indication.

He was up and dressed before he really thought about it, was stopping at the shops before he spent much time considering what he was buying, and then he was knocking on Nick’s door.

He had a moment of _oh god what time is it, please let it not be before nine on a Sunday_ , but thankfully when he checked his phone it was closer to ten, and Nick answered with a small smile that didn’t look like he’d just been dragged out of bed.

Harry returned it and held out the paper bag he was carrying.

“I, uh. Candles. So it…smells different. Like, new beginnings?” Which, god, he sounded like an idiot. Maybe Nick would get a laugh out of this if nothing else, because Harry had been trying for comforting and he'd ended up on Nick's doorstep with a bag of scented candles, so clearly this was not his strength.

Nick’s eyes crinkled slightly around the corners though, and he mimed clinking a glass. “God yes. To new beginnings.” He took the bag from Harry, turned around and continued as he wandered further into the house. “Your timing couldn’t have been better, actually. The answer, if you were wondering, was apparently yes. You _can_ miss someone more because of candles. Or maybe I just lost my mind? Entirely possible. But I was doing laundry, of all things, and he’d—you know what, forget it. Nevermind. I was a disaster, what else is new?”

Harry shook his head. For someone who professed to be so self-admiring, Nick never gave himself much of a break. “You’re not a disaster.”

“Clearly you didn’t have the privilege of hearing the voicemail I left for Jamie last night.”

Harry winced, “Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“Grim, it’s…you’re not a disaster. You’re hurt, but—you’re not a disaster.” If nothing else, Harry was sure about that.

Nick snorted, “All I’ve got to do is tick off ‘embarrassing string of drunk texts’ and I’ll have filled up my disaster bingo card.”

Harry bit his lip, “Maybe we can skip that step? Just,” he waved his hand through the air, “straight through to…whatever comes after, in the healing process.”

Nick’s smile grew, “I’ll keep that sage advice in mind.” He looked a bit like he wanted to reach over and ruffle Harry’s hair, and that fond expression was so much better than what it had replaced, made the whole morning worth it right there. “Who would have thought that I should skip that step, if possible?”

Harry grinned in his direction, “Harry Styles.” He paused, “Philosopher.” Another break, “London.”

Nick’s laughter cut him off, and Harry’s smile widened.  “Yes, yes, I’m in the presence of greatness. Student of Aristotle, I’ve practically got Plato in my living room.”

“I think it was the other way ‘round? Wasn’t…I think Aristotle was the student?”

Nick turned to him with wide eyes and a wider smile, “A _scholar_ , ladies and gentlemen! Throw that in the face of people who’re on your case about not finishing school. _Wasn’t Aristotle the student_ , indeed.”

Harry was laughing, “At least you’ve never doubted my genius, have you?”

“Yes.” Nick’s answer was immediate, and Harry threw on an exaggerated pout.

“Awww.”

“I’m kidding! I’m kidding. Obviously I came out of the womb predicting that, do y’know what? In nine years time, there will be born the mind of our generation. I was like the angel, predicting the birth of Jesus! Come, from far and wide, and behold—”

Harry shoved him, and Nick dissolved into laughter, sprawled dramatically onto the sofa.

“What, you don’t think I’m an angel?”

He was staring up at Harry, laughter still on his face and in his voice, wearing jeans with the knees torn out and a white t-shirt that was getting to be too thin in places, and to be quite honest, Harry didn’t think he was too far off.   

“I think…I think you’re the devil in disguise.”

And when Nick burst out laughing again, well. If this was the kind of contentment that always came with making someone else happy, Harry could fully understand why comedians chose to do it for a living.

 

.

 

“We can’t—we’re four months early! We can’t have annual-lease-signing day _now_.”

“So we’ll have another one!” Gillian was saying, though he could hardly make her out over whatever was going on in the background. Was she outside?

“Another—why would we not just have it then?”

Henry sounded long suffering, though he must have been somewhere more conducive to a phone call, because his voice came through loud and clear, “As I’ve said, I can’t come on the actual day. I have a show, and as important as this holiday, celebrated by a grand total of three people globally by the way, is to me—”

“Alright, no need to get snarky,” Nick cut in, which he recognized was rich, coming from him, but he was allowed. “I never said you should miss anything. I just…why would we not have it a day late or something, instead of _four months early_ —”

Gellz wasn’t having it, “If it means so much to you, we’ll celebrate twice! But stop your whinging and clear you calendar for next Saturday night, because you’re coming to dinner with us and it’s going to be delicious and you’re going to have a marvellous time.”

And really, who was Nick to argue with that.

 

.

 

“What I don’t understand is,” he paused for a breath and Nick immediately opened his mouth, so Harry rushed to cut him off at the pass, “and don’t say ‘a lot’!”

Nick was laughing, “I wasn’t going to!”

Which, really, Harry had known him for almost ten years, “You absolutely were, don’t even start.”

For a second Nick looked like he might have protested, but apparently he couldn’t keep the front up for long, smile breaking through. “Yeah, alright, I absolutely was. Go on though! One of the many things in life that you don’t understand?”

He looked expectant, and Harry stood on his foot, felt much better at the indignant noise Nick let out. “ _What I don’t understand_ _is,_ why do they all seem to be men? Don’t there need to be girl ones somewhere? How do they, y’know…reproduce?”

“How do they reproduce?” Nick echoed, laughing and incredulous. “You’re such a disturbed human being. Left home too young.” He dodged Harry’s elbow, kept going, “They’re little yellow blobs that we just watched yell at each other in some weirdly comprehensible language for two hours. Who leaves a children’s movie and thinks, you know those bean-shaped cartoons? I wonder how they have sex!”

“Would you—that’s not what I meant! I wasn’t…I was just wondering why there aren’t any girls! We have the Doctor, we have Ghostbusters, where’s the female minion representation?”

“The female—” Nick shook his head, but Harry thought it was worth noting that his smile was wider than ever. “Actually, how do you know they’re not girls? They’re cartoons, they could be anything they want to be! For someone who _doesn’t like labels_ that was awfully assumptive of you.”

“Oh for…they’re coded male! I didn’t…assume any—”

“They’re programmed to be male? What’re you on about, you’ve been watching too much sci fi.”

“No! It’s…when you have a cartoon, they get certain, like, characteristics, and…you know what, nevermind. The little yellow blob friends can be whoever they want to be, and I’ll support them. Happy?”

Nick slung his arm around Harry’s shoulder.

“As a clam.”

And he actually looked it, Harry thought, with no small amount of gratification.

He actually looked it.

 

.

 

When Caroline had suggested drinks, Nick had been imagining one of their usual nights out, with the Strictly crew or some of her Love Island mates, vodka flowing and arguing over which club to hit first.

Admittedly he was sipping a cocktail, but he was also sitting at a—if not quiet or calm, certainly not very Flacky-like—bar, had been for an hour, and there wasn’t a disco light to be found. And he loved her, he truly did, but watching Caroline Flack try to be sympathetic and motherly instead of buying another round of shots was doing his head in a bit.

“And you don’t even know who it _was_?”

Not that she was having an over amount of success at sympathy or mothering, but it was the thought that counted.

“How would I—Haz didn’t know, and what? Was I going to ask Jamie?”

“Yes! Of course you were going to ask Jamie!”

“Christ. The thought of…What difference does it even—”

“Well how the bloody hell are we going to burn his house down _now_? We don’t even know who he is! The combined power of our social media, we could have gone medieval, had him put in the stocks, or—or organized an angrily-themed flash mob, or…”

Nick’s laughter had clearly infected her, because she couldn’t seem to keep talking around her smile, and they both spent a minute grinning into their martinis until Caroline sighed.    

He watched her face transform, smile mostly slipping away and replaced by something he couldn’t identify. She met his gaze briefly before flicking her eyes to the side and biting the edge of her lip.

“Just…be careful Grimmy, yeah?”

Nick wasn’t quite ready for her tone just then, hesitant in a way that she never was. “Careful?”

She paused, pressed her lips together.

“Caro, what—”

“The papers. Obviously it’s nonsense, what they’re saying about you, it’s always nonsense, but…nonsense can,” she laughed shortly, “nonsense can hurt, when it’s all still raw.”

He stared.

God. Caroline Flack, admitting something had hurt her.

“Don’t…don’t let that rule your life, I mean, not that you would, but that’s not what I’m saying. Just—brace yourself, I guess. Pull out your skin of steel.”

His mouth twitched, “My skin of steel?”

She snorted, “Please, we’re a bit too similar for the ‘I don’t know what you mean’ routine. Skins of steel and alcohol poisoning to match.”

“Excuse you!” His laugh felt startled out of him, “I’ve been two-drinks-max-and-in-bed-by-eleven for years at this point!”

She raised her eyebrows, “Course you have.” A brief pause, “Speaking of, want another?”

He grinned, back on even ground.

This Caroline, the one that danced on tables and was undoing another button on her blouse, successfully flagging down the bartender in about three seconds flat?

This one he knew.

By the time she turned back for his answer his smirked matched her own, “God, yes. Best make it a double, if we’re planning revenge-based dance routines.”

She threw her head back and laughed, probably both genuinely and for the benefit of the twenty-five year old mixing their drinks, and he thought _yes._

He’d done well.

He might have been a romantic disaster, but friends wise? Friends wise, he was doing alright.

 

.

 

It hadn’t just been Caroline, was the thing. His entire friend circle had essentially closed ranks during the past few months, were seemingly determined that this wasn’t going to get the better of him if they had a single thing to say about it. They must have worked out some sort of schedule, because it really did feel like at least one person was always checking in and making sure he was alright, like he was being shuffled around according to some massively complicated joint custody arrangement.

He might have been annoyed if he hadn’t been so overwhelmingly grateful.

Because really, it had been months, and Nick was sure everyone had been plenty busy before they’d added babysitting him into the mix. Admittedly it did seem as though Harry had somehow come out with the brunt of the shifts, but even setting that rather baffling turn of events aside, it was only just then starting to wind down.

It was maybe weird to feel nostalgic for the present, but Nick was managing it whenever he thought of the time his friends had all spent bolstering him back up.

And it had worked, was the thing. He was doing better.

He was doing so much better.

He was talking about other things, he was back to sounding completely normal on the radio, laughing about permanent bachelorhood with none of the hysteria of those first few weeks. He’d been out with Emily and Fifi the other day and Jamie hadn’t come up once in conversation, not the entire time.

He wasn’t generally a silver linings sort of person, because who wanted to look on the bright side when you could wallow and luxuriate in the tragedy of your lot in life, but this time it was hard to miss.

There were a good fifteen people who had made it their mission to ensure he was alright, even some of his more distant friends were coming from all over the bloody country to essentially give him a hug, Harry had all but moved in—which was a bit startling after two years of polite contact, but Nick was so far from complaining he'd have had trouble finding it on a map—hell, even the listeners had been sending in kind messages for the most part, often nothing more than wishing him all the best.

So it wasn’t that Nick was fully convinced he was fine, exactly, but given all that, he thought he’d made quite an admirable start.

 

.

 

The fates kindly allowed him a few weeks to languish in that mindset before deciding that, do y’know what, they really couldn’t afford to pass up such a golden opportunity for a laugh.

 

.

 

He was leaving the bathroom of a club, of all places, when it finally happened. And maybe it had been inevitable—they’d been together for two years, had, over time, adopted each other’s favourite places—but London was vast when you wanted it to be. You never just ran into someone in London, and Nick had thought maybe he’d be spared.

He’d obviously overlooked his track record when it came to good luck.

“Nick?” The voice was quiet, hesitant, and dashed any hopes he’d been holding out that he hadn’t been spotted in return, could just brush past with his head down and go collapse onto Miquita.

He took a second to close his eyes, took a breath, and pasted a smile on his face before he spun around. “Jamie! Hiya! Good to—” he cut himself off. Was it, really? “Howvya been?”

“I—” Jamie looked a bit thrown, which. Good, honestly. “Yeah, uh. Good.” He couldn’t seem to think how to go on, and Nick was not in a generous mood, felt absolutely no inclination to step in and help him out. “I’m…Are you—how’s things? I’ve, uh, you’ve been,” his eyes flicked to the side, “in the papers, um. A lot?”

Nick blinked twice. “I’ve been—” his voice was higher than he might have hoped. He cleared his throat, snorted. “You know what, well-spotted. That I have. Always has been my favourite topic of conversation, what people write about me and my friends. Love being accused of riding people’s coattails, how good of you to bring it up.”

“That’s not, I didn’t mean it like that. Come on, let’s…let’s have a drink, yeah? I’ve m—” _missed you_ , Nick filled in.

Which, goddamn it.

So much for being able to storm off in a fit of righteous indignation.

Nick ran a hand through his hair, catalogued all the reasons why this was a terrible idea, mentally recited Aimee’s speech about how it had been good riddance, and he deserved better, and how seeing or calling Jamie would just be a step in the wrong direction, would keep him from healing or moving on or whatever it was that he was meant to be doing.

She’d been right, of course. He was definitely not getting that drink.

“Sure,” Nick laughed a bit bleakly. “Why not?”

 

.

 

He was incredibly proud of himself the second that Jamie slipped out the door. Miquita had spotted them the instant they reached the bar, of course, had looked a bit like she was going to have an aneurysm. Bless her though, she’d left them alone for a good fifteen minutes before apparently even her patience for his self-destructive streak had run through.

He’d been fine, though.

He’d been witty and polite and laughed at some story Jamie had told, said that it was _good to catch up_ with a steady voice and pleasant expression. He had completely and totally held it together, and god he was proud of himself.

He’d even been fine after the fact, had stayed out for hours, dancing and taking his usual batch of blurry instagram stories of everyone in the vicinity spinning under the flashing lights. He hadn’t even ordered another drink.

He’d told Miquita that he thought this was a sign, that he was amazed, but obviously he was well and truly over it, and how incredible that it had only taken—what? Three, four months?

Legend.

Couldn’t have been better.

Nick Grimshaw and his incredible emotion-handling prowess.

Take a bow.

Really, no need to applaud.

So of course he got home, locked his door, bent down to throw a toy for Pig—the squeaky one that Jamie had bought in one of his many attempts to bribe his way into her affections—and cried for three hours straight.

He was halfway through a tub of some rather awful, low-sugar, coconut-based excuse for chocolate ice cream that he was thinking Daisy must have left at some point when he decided that he wasn’t equipped to handle this on his own.

Aimee picked up on the third ring.

“‘Lo?”

“Fuck, I’ve woken you. Sorry. Sorry, I’ll—I’ll call you tomorrow, you go back to—”

“Nick?” Aimee suddenly sounded far more awake. “Grim, love, what’s happened, what’s wrong?”

And god, he must sound worse than he’d realized, because she’d gone from asleep to concerned mum in three seconds flat.

“Nothing!” his voice cracked ominously, which. How convincing. He cleared his throat, figured gravelly was better than wailing, “Well, almost nothing. I, uh. Let me just preface this with the fact that you are always right, and I should always listen to you, and starting from now I am definitely one-hundred percent always going to do that—”

“Oh, god.”

“But I, um. I ran into Jamie? And it was fine, honestly, nothing bad even happened and it wasn’t like he was with anyone. At least, I don’t think he was with anyone? I mean, okay, historically I haven’t exactly been the best at noticing that sort of thing,” he laughed, and even he winced at how it sounded. “But,” he waved his hand as though she could somehow see him through the phone. “I was _fine_.”

Aimee huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh under different circumstances, “Clearly, yeah. I’ve never heard anyone more fine, in fact.”

Which, fair, but, “It’s just, I don’t understand. Because I was good! I was doing well, we had this whole conversation and I was so put together. You honestly wouldn’t have believed it, I’ve never been so collected in my life.”

“Oh darling,” Aimee sounded sympathetic, and this must be coming across truly tragically, because she absolutely should have started taking the piss by now.

Pig was smushed up to his side, proving once again that his dogs really were incredible when it counted.

“I think Pig and Stinky miss him? Which I know is ridiculous, I know that, they’re dogs, but it’s just, he was around a lot in the mornings and now they’re—by themselves,” he sniffed, tried rather unsuccessfully to get himself under control, “and it’s just…they _trusted_ him, you know? They trusted him, and now he’s not here. He’s off at bars telling cute little anecdotes about this week’s big shop, and. How do people _do_ this? All these people are like _friends with their exes_ and just have these totally normal relationships, and—” he hiccupped, cut himself off.

“Nick, love, _you’re_ friends with loads of your exes. You have those normal relationships. Those are when things, you know, fizzle out. Or you move away, or work comes in the middle, or whatever. Then you go back to small talk and pretending you don’t know what each other looks like naked. They aren’t…that’s not what,” she cut off and blew out a breath, sounded forceful when she continued. “You don’t have to be friends, Grim. He treated you like shit, and you don’t have to be friends.”

Nick swallowed. He’d known that already, sort of, but there was a certain finality in hearing it out loud. “Yeah.”

“And Grim,” Aimee ventured eventually, sounding tentative. Aimee never sounded tentative. Clearly he’d made everyone he knew into a tiptoer. “Just…you’re not alone. Not for one second. You say the word and we will _descend_ , it’ll be like a plague, you’ll never have a moment of peace again.”

He sniffed, didn’t say _I’m alone right now_ , because that’s what he’d told Miquita he wanted, and he was trying to be better about expecting people to read his mind. “Thanks Aims. I love you, babe.”

“Oh Grim, I love you too. We all do. Come for tea Sunday, yeah? We’re out tomorrow, but we’re dying to see you.” He opened his mouth, but she wasn’t done. “It’s the weekend, don’t try to tell me that you’re working.”

He laughed a bit, caught, “Yeah. Yeah, sounds good.” He cleared his throat, “Now go back to sleep, it’s the middle of the night! What sort of lunatic is awake in the middle of the night?”  

She snorted, “Alright, alright, I can tell when I’m not wanted. What, big plans all of a sudden?”

With a bottle of vodka, now that he’d remembered that yes, it was Friday, and he wasn’t getting up at five tomorrow. “Wouldn’t you just like to know.”

“G’night, Grim,” he could hear the smile in her voice.

“Night, Aims. And thanks, really.”

“Course.” There was a pause, and this was why they didn’t usually get emotional. Once you started it was impossible to get out. She laughed a bit, and Nick joined her, “We’re honestly the worst.”

“That we are. Cheers, then. I’ll see you.”

They rung off, and Nick took a second to consider his options.

He really didn’t drink much anymore, not like he used to, but he had enough stashed away around his house that he probably never needed to go to a liquor shop again.

He could absolutely just go to bed, but…he hesitated. He already felt a bit hungover, the front of his head throbbing and his eyes itchy. It’s not like it could get much worse. Plus the added benefit of feeling better, just while he waited for this latest bout of temporary insanity to pass by.

Nick’s feet were already leading him towards the bottom drawer of the cabinet under the telly, so apparently he wasn’t actually having much of a debate. His body had decided, and it was just waiting for the rest of him to catch up.

Honestly though, his brain had never been far behind. He wasn’t working in the morning, and if there had ever been a night more deserving of a nightcap, well.

It wasn’t coming to mind.

 

.

 

“Haz!” He hiccupped, “You’re not here right now, so you’re probably asleep like a sensible person, but I just wanted to advise you, in case you’re not and you were considering ice cream. I would avoid it. I wouldn’t— _terrible_ chase choice. Ha. Chase choice.”

He sniffed, and oh god, was he _still crying_? How did he even have the strength at this point?

“This is. Awful. This is awful. I haven’t been like this since—and who did I call that time? Obviously it couldn’t—Aimee, I guess. It must have been. God, she must be sick of me. You must be sick of me. How is everyone still—I mean, it’s been months, and I’m drowning in fake ice cream and…this is horrible? I need to just. I was _fine_. I really—everything was good. Everything _is_ good. I don’t know why I can’t just…be happy and fun and _Nick Grimshaw_ , you know? No one’s going to want to— _I_ wouldn’t want to deal with this. God, I’m such a mess. Sorry. God. Sorry. Please erase this. Don’t even listen to it, just, delete! Goodbye! Everything is absolutely fine and there have been no awful coconut voicemails left. Poof! Fixed. I’d be brilliant as a magic person. Magicman? Magician? I don’t—”

And then there was a beep that was either actually the loudest and most shrill noise he’d ever heard, or his brain was just having about as good of a night as the rest of him, followed by the dial tone.

Christ.

He was going to regret that, he could already tell.

 

.

 

He opened the door to Harry’s smirking face. At least he’d had the decency to bring coffee.

“Good night?” Harry sounded far too amused, and his voice was far too loud.

“I think I might be dead. Like I might honestly—as if the bags under my eyes, which, are they even bags anymore if they’re bigger than your cheeks? Is this essentially just my face now? Anyways, as if they weren’t clue enough, add in my skin tone which is now literally grey, and I’ve become Frankenstein.”

A beat. “I think Frankenstein was green, actually.”

“Oh, you’re the zombie expert now, are you? Give me that,” he swiped his hand out for the coffee that Harry kept moving just out of his reach. Little shit.

“This is the gratitude I get, taking time out of my very busy and important schedule to bring nourishment to those in need, and he says ‘gimme that’.”

Nick was fighting with the traitorous corners of his lips, “For god’s sake, get inside so I can close the door. The one day it’s sunny in London,” he got the door shut, and was back to his beloved darkness. “Honestly, the injustices I endure.”

Harry had his back mostly turned, kicking off his boots and lining them up by the door, but Nick could see the dimple his smile was pressing into his cheek. “Just terrible, really.”

They drifted over to the sofa, and Nick had queued up a double Corrie before Harry turned to him, “Really though, are you alright? I got,” his mouth twitched, “I got quite a voicemail this morning. You were slurring, um, a lot, but…something about coconut fuelled magic?”

Nick wished he didn’t remember leaving that message, was tempted to pretend he’d blacked out, but he’d never been very good at keeping embarrassment off his face. “God,” he groaned, laughing helplessly. “I, uh. First off, soz for, you know, going mad and calling in the middle of the night.”

“Well, nothing new there.”

Nick snorted, but couldn’t keep the levity in his tone. “It wasn’t…totally unprompted.” Harry seemed to sense the shift, his smile dimming as well. Nick went on, “I was out, and I—I ran into Jamie? And he wanted to have a drink and, because I’m apparently not very bright I figured, sure, what could possibly go wrong! Which, well. A lot, evidently.”

“Nick…” and now Harry looked a bit like _he_ was going to get teary.

“It was all fine, honestly. It only got tragic when I got home, which—was weird, actually, because nothing even happened, but suddenly I was eating Daisy’s chocolate something-or-other and washing it down with vodka and calling Aimee and you and…” Nick pushed his hands through his hair, “I just…I dunno.” The rest came out all in a rush, “And I know you never liked him anyways, so I’m sure this all makes absolutely no sense to you. I mean, good riddance! He was awful! Which, it’s not even that I disagree, at this point. But somehow,” Nick blew a breath out through his nose, pushed his lips together in a desperate attempt to not bloody cry. Again.

Harry made a strange sound after a minute, as if he were going to clear his throat but changed his mind at the last second, and when Nick glanced over he was biting the side of his lip.

One more false start before, “You said ‘boyfriend’.”

“What?”

“When I got back from tour. That night, ages ago, when we had dinner? You introduced him, and you said ‘boyfriend’.”

Nick suddenly had a feeling he knew where this was going, “Haz, it’s fine. Obviously you had the right instinct—”

Harry grabbed his arm, “No. That’s the—I didn’t. He was nice. He didn’t treat me like a picture in a magazine, and I had absolutely no…” Harry blew out a breath, “You didn’t miss anything. There wasn’t…some sign, that I picked up on. It was just. Obviously you and I weren’t,” he waved his hands between them, and Nick would’ve mocked him for it except he had no idea how to describe what they’d been either, “hadn’t been for ages, but…you never say boyfriend. You’re famously,” he huffed a laugh, “anti-boyfriend, and I just…”

Nick swallowed, but—shockingly to anyone who’d ever spent more than five seconds in his presence—didn’t say anything.    

“It makes sense to me, Grim. You…it absolutely makes sense.”

Nick was torn, because ninety-nine percent of him wanted to go back to five minutes ago, laughing about his hangover, but the one percent that dealt with emotions was incredibly pleased about this turn of the conversation.

“I just…I don’t know if I ever actually said it, but Nick—I’m so sorry, that all of this happened, that it all fell apart.”

Nick had been around Harry enough recently that he could read him again, nearly as well as he’d been able to back in the day, and Harry had truly meant that. Which—

If he’d imagined having a conversation with Harry about how maybe he wasn’t quite as over Jamie as he would have liked to be, Nick wouldn’t have pictured it going like this.

“I hope, I hope that one day, it all seems…insignificant. Just like, a blip, you know?” Harry glanced over at him, all sincerity and holding his gaze and letting the smallest smile bloom on his face. “And in the meantime, I’m thinking I’ll recruit Aimee and Gellz and Lou and whoever else is up for a bit of a mad one, and we’ll go…hide his car keys and, and steal all his furniture while he’s asleep.”

Nick’s laugh felt a bit like it had been torn out of him, but it was real. “Steal all his furniture?”

“Don’t sound like that,” Harry was grinning, “It’s perfect! It would be invasive and disconcerting and massively inconvenient, but also non-violent!”

And Nick was suddenly so overwhelmingly _fond_ that he felt like his chest was struggling to hold it all in.

“Tell me no more. Plausible deniability, and all.”

Harry apparently took him at his word, smiled one more time before turning back to the telly, and Nick just stared, because really, what a weirdo. Who actually watched Corrie when they could just use it as background noise for scrolling through seventeen social media apps at the same time?

Harry had always been like that though, shushing Nick whenever he tried to give his fascinating running commentaries throughout movies, looking disapproving whenever Nick just glanced up from his twitter feed every now and then to see how Gordon Ramsay’s latest batch of victims were faring in trying to cook a beef wellington.

He remembered this endless bickering of theirs, on how Harry was so invested in whatever was on right up until the moment he inevitably fell asleep, sloth that he was. Why care so much about the beginning if he never saw the end of anything anyways?

Now that he thought about it though, it had been a long time since they last had that argument, each reciting what had essentially become their lines in the dramatic rehashing of _watching telly vs Watching Telly_.

Years, probably.

Harry was leaning into his side, and Nick knew—one hundred percent knew—that he was at most ten minutes away from falling asleep, and fuck he’d _missed this_. He’d missed this like a limb, and somehow he hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t noticed that they’d stopped spending their free moments like this, hadn’t noticed that he wished they’d kept it up.

God, self awareness really wasn’t his strength, was it?

He would notice this time though, and that was probably why he usually skipped the introspection.

He’d missed this and he was going to miss this again, whenever Harry went back to doing whatever it was he’d been doing before Nick’s life had flipped on its head. Obviously he couldn’t just hang around forever, spending all his free time making sure Nick didn’t crumble into a million heartbroken pieces, or whatever it was he felt obligated to prevent right now.

He had things to do, a life to lead. This was Harry Styles, and Harry Styles did not live his life on Nick Grimshaw’s sofa watching daytime soaps. He wasn’t going to just stick around comforting Nick about his break-up until they both died of old age.

It had already been almost four months, which was honestly far more than whatever friendship code Harry was operating under would have called for.

But god, what was he going to _do_? Harry had somehow managed to become the person he saw at least every other day, might actually be working on catching up to Fiona on the scale of hours spent together. How was he going to go back to texting weekly to check in from across London or across England or across the bloody world? He’d have to drag Emily back into his house (his house now, no one else’s—no Emily, no Jamie, just him, by himself), right when she’d finally settled into her new place, so that he could cry all over her and force her to have nightly sleepovers and moan to her about how he was going to die alone with five thousand cats. She’d be thrilled, he was sure.

He was such a disaster.

How did he always manage to make his life into such a _mess_?   

The whole thing was just…fuck.

Fuck.

 

.

 

Harry woke up slowly, had a moment of not remembering where he was before he blinked up at the million white posters with writing scrawled across them that he both loved and hated—hated, because they were awful, and loved because Nick thought they were the greatest things he’d ever seen—and realised which sofa this was.

He pushed himself up off where he’d been leaning on Nick’s thigh, carefully didn’t examine that at all, and stretched before looking over at Nick and getting ready to apologize for falling asleep. Again. He laughed a bit, because really, if the singing thing hadn’t worked out, he could have met Simon on Britain’s Got Talent, showcasing his incredible ability to sleep anywhere, at any time.

He got up to get a glass of water from the kitchen, wandered back in to actually say sorry and ask what they should get up to, if Nick was feeling human enough to get up to anything this afternoon. He could feel the last traces of his laughter just dying down, and thought maybe he should start with an explanation of what exactly was so funny.

Nick had a strange look on his face though, as if he’d tried to smile back but it had somehow gotten stuck. Harry didn’t even have a chance to open his mouth before Nick was talking.

“Listen, when you need to go back to your life, it’s—I’ll be fine. I’ll be absolutely fine, just. Warn me, okay? Give me like a week, just to get myself ready. Because normally everything would be good, fine, completely a non-issue, but it’s just…been a lot of leaving. Recently. So, and I don’t mean, you should definitely live your life! When you need to, but if you could just give me a heads up. So I’m not clingy. Nobody likes a clinger—”

Harry blinked.

He should have cut that off ages ago, but he was honestly so flabbergasted that he’d just stood there staring silently.

He found his voice, “Grim, I’m—” he shook his head, “What?” It took Harry a bit to even register what he’d said, “This…this _is_ my life. Like, my normal life, that I’m not…leaving or, I mean, I will be, briefly, for the promo tour and then the actual tour, but…” he couldn’t think of how to go on.

Had Nick thought…what, that the last few months had been some sort of pity fueled vacation? Or, no, surely not.

Maybe that he was trying to get his fill of London life before going back to LA?

“I love London, always have. I’m…this is my home, like, my actual, proper,” he took a breath. “I’m not leaving, not for good, anyways.”

Nick looked a bit like that had somehow been a revelation, said, “Oh,” in an odd voice, before he cleared his throat and continued in a far more normal tone. “Well, good then. That’s my plus one to the Valentino show next month sorted. I thought I might have to make a new friend to bring with me, and that’s always such a hassle.”

That Nick had more friends than almost anyone Harry had ever met, could easily have found ten people willing to go with him in about five minutes flat if he’d wanted to, was apparently not relevant. Harry wasn’t about to argue with this plan, though.

Nick was still going, “It’s rubbish taking new people to fashion events, you never know if they’re going to be willing to make fun of the clothes with you, or if they’ll be all posh and wanting to talk about _vision_ and seaming choices and the colours of the season.”

Harry laughed, “You never know, I could’ve got very posh while you weren’t looking. What if I wanted to discuss the details of turquoise versus aquamarine?”

“ _Aquamarine_? Please tell me you’ve used that word in casual conversation before. Talking to Lou or Harry or someone,” he slowed his speech, dropped his voice, “Yes, I’d like yet another pair of sequinned trousers for my next performance, or, y’know, lounging around the house on my day off watching telly, and I’d love them in aquamarine if possible, thanks ever so much,” he looked like he might have kept going, but Harry’s laughter had set him off and they both spent a minute trying to get their breath back.

“It was lipstick, actually. Not trousers,” Harry got out, grinning. “Thought I’d try for a mermaid look.”

“You know, the really awful thing is that you’d probably carry it off, start a trend. Give it six months and you’d be the face of Sephora,” Nick smile was huge, and Harry had never been more pleased to see it. It still wasn’t frequent enough. “How sickening,” Nick all but cackled.

“It’s not easy, being this perfect.”

And things were so comfortable, had fallen so quickly back into the banter that made up the majority of their relationship, that Harry could scarcely believe this conversation had started with Nick getting ready for him to cut and run.

He wanted to say something, _you’re my go-to person_ or _I swear I’m not leaving, not this time_ , but when he opened his mouth what actually came out was, “Does Valentino do menswear?”

A beat.

“ _Does Valentino do_ —yes! Harry!”

Which had admittedly garnered exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for, so.

Close enough.

 

.

 

Harry came along to the pub quiz night that Friday, slid into the booth with Lou and Mitch and Sarah and Claire, waved to Alex where he was just coming in, and started chatting to Sam as he took off his coat. Tomo came back with Nick’s pint, and Nick thanked him, smiled not at all distractedly, and went right back to eyeing Harry out of his peripheral vision.

Not that he wasn’t welcome, because obviously he was. These were his friends as well as Nick’s, more so, in some cases, and it honestly wasn't at all odd that he’d turned up.

It was just…pub quiz?

Nick wasn't surprised, per se, but—rational thought aside—it still seemed a bit like Harry should have been club hopping with Ryan Gosling or having dinner with Mick Jagger.

Instead he was arguing with Mitch about _the year in which England and Wales became united with Scotland (please print)_ , smiling yet undeterred at Tomo’s, “It’s a bloody year, it’s numbers, of course we’re going to print.”

“Can I phone a friend?” Harry was asking, and Mitch’s tone was wry when he responded, though his face was as close to blank as always.

“We’ve spent too much time in America. This is not Who Wants to be a Millionaire, we’re not phoning in your sister.”

“But she’s smarter than we are!”

Mitch was fond, shrugging as if to say _fair_ , but, “Still a firm no.”

Nick shook his head.

This was—this was _normal_ , by now. This shouldn't have been a thing. It shouldn't have even registered.

They were going on five months of Harry turning up for things like this, and any time his brain wanted to adjust, to stop him from feeling a thrill whenever Harry texted to ask what was on that night and then actually came out for it—well, that would be great. He’d be totally fine with that.

(Nick would decide, much later, that he didn’t mind so much about the thrill. Which was just as well anyways, seeing as how it may have become more normalized, but it never really went away.)

 

.

 

“Warm up! Think of it as a warm up!”

“No,” Harry was whining, drawing out the ‘o’ for ages.

“Why not? You’ll blow the rest of us out of the water! Honestly, a popstar that doesn’t like karaoke? You’re a disgrace.”

Admittedly, if he'd been going for cajoling, Nick could probably have phrased that better.

Daisy nudged him in the side, shot him a look, “Obviously you don’t have to sing if you don’t want to, Harry.” Her voice was gentle, “but you’re leaving soon, and we’ll miss you. Please come?”

And really, Nick thought, it would have taken a stronger man than Harry to turn down a sincere Daisy Lowe.

The four of them squashed into the cab, talking over each other and each trying to get in contact with everyone else to let them know where they were headed—“Gellz says to stop texting her because I’m now the third person to invite her in the past ten minutes”, “Rita’s coming and apparently bringing Cara!”, “Has anyone spoken to Collette?”, “Aims said she was in, yeah?”—to the point where the poor cabby probably thought they were all absolutely insane.

To be fair, maybe not, because he’d just piled into the back with Daisy Lowe, Alexa Chung, and Harry Styles, so the man was probably in something of a distracted daze no matter which way he swung. At least he had Nick to rest his eyes on if he needed the visual equivalent of coffee beans at a wine tasting. Always happy to be of service, he was, fulfilling his true destiny of making all of his friends look, impossibly, that much better by comparison.

By the time they got there, London traffic being what it was, they were late to their own party. Rita, Cara, Aimee, Lou, Gillian, Mairead, Collette, Becky, Emily, and Drew were already sitting down at a booth, and damn if this hadn’t become a gathering of London’s best dressed.

There was a lot of hugging and him introducing Cara to Alexa, even though in hindsight Nick was almost positive they’d met before. Hopefully he could write off his idiocy as alcohol induced later and no one would remember that he hadn’t yet had a drink at that point.

It devolved into a bit of a shouting match, everyone trying to talk to each other at the same time and shouting to be heard, but somehow Rita was managing to get everyone signed up for songs despite the general chaos. This bar should have been paying them, nevermind them paying for the table and mic time. Nick could only imagine the press that was going to explode tomorrow morning once this hit the internet.

He was also trying not to think about it.

It got easier to keep from his mind when their turns came up, because there wasn’t much room left for worrying about headlines in the Mail when he was watching Aimee and Rita get up to sing _Let’s Get It On_ , and Lou getting up solo like the superstar she was to do _I Will Survive_ , and taking the stage himself with a whole group of them to do a rendition of _Cheerleader_ that was admittedly more yelling than singing.

He’d just got back to the table, flushed, laughing and looking instinctively for Harry, though he wouldn’t have admitted that on pain of death, when Rita nudged him.

“I didn’t think he’d do it!” she yelled over the noise of the bar.

Nick raised his voice, “Who’d do what?”

But he needn’t have asked, because suddenly the lights were dimming again and another song was being queued up, and Nick registered it was Harry up there with Cara at the same moment he placed the revving noises and first chords of _Power._

He let out a startled laugh, because Harry Styles and Cara Delevingne of all people, up on stage and about to launch into a karaoke version of Little Mix?

He was with Rita on that one. Not something he’d been expecting to see in this lifetime either.   

And then suddenly the track was in full swing and Cara was opening her mouth to start them off. She was wearing sunglasses even though it was almost too dark to see, and she’d somehow found a snapback that was on her head sideways. She still looked fabulous, of course, but she'd clearly grabbed those accessories just for this song.

Which, oh. Oh no.

Because Cara was deepening her voice, shouting out, “ _Hold up! No you didn't bow, bow!_ ” And on she went.

 _I ain't the chick to walk behind you around town_  
_Just cause you're packin', packin', whoop, down south_  
_That don't mean I'm ever gonna take it laying down, baby_  
_Oh I'm a machine when I do it_  
_I'll be catching fire, gasoline when I do it_  
_Just cause you're packin', packin', whoop, down south  
_ _That don't mean I'm ever gonna take it laying down_

And then she was stepping back, but if she’d taken that part, then—

 _Baby, you're the man_  
_But I got the, I got the, I got the power_  
_You make rain_  
_But I'll make it, I'll make it, I'll make it shower_  
_You should know, I'm the one who's in control  
_ _I'll let you come take the wheel, long as you don't forget_

Harry was belting, and he sounded fucking amazing. Honestly though Nick hardly noticed, because their eyes had somehow caught right around the first _I got the power_ and he was a little busy trying not to spontaneously combust.  
   
_Who got the power?_

Hysterical laughter was likely not the answer to all of life’s problems, but it would have been a tempting option right then if he could have managed to unfreeze any part of his body.

“Hold up!” Cara was shouting again, Harry having wrapped up his verse, and this was truly a bit like a trainwreck—Nick couldn’t look away.

He was watching, rapt, as Cara sang, before the two of them took the _Motorbike_ section together, and then Harry was soloing again, and—

 _You should know, I'm the one who's in control_  
_I'll let you come take the wheel, long as you don't forget_  
_You're the man_  
_But I got the, I got the, I got the power_  
_You make rain_  
_But I'll make it, I'll make it, I'll make it shower_  
_You should know, I'm the one who's in control  
_ _I'll let you come take the wheel, long as you don't forget_

_I got the power_

“Well,” Gillian finally broke the silence from her spot pressed up against his side in the booth, face impressively blank. “Never let it be said that Harry Styles is a liar.”

She also, impressively, didn’t fall over dead at the force of the glare Nick levelled at her, so.

Witchcraft, honestly.

 

.

 

“What’s so funny?” Harry asked, wandering into the room the next morning and not looking at all worse for wear, despite the fact that Nick knew he’d been up until at least four. His single was out in a few days, the first one from this album, and he couldn’t have looked more healthy or relaxed. Fucking popstar genes.

“Nothing, nothing!” Nick angled his screen away, but Harry wasn’t having any of it.

“No!” He was matching Nick’s smile without even knowing why, “You’ve got to tell me now.”

Which…

Well.

He asked for it.

Nick bit his lip, still couldn’t quite keep it from twitching upwards. “Have you checked your twitter mentions lately?”

Harry blinked, “Oh god.”

“ _‘Larry is real!’, ‘When will your favs ever???’_ —that one’s got about a hundred heart eye emojis following it— _‘_ _Harry is all of us omg louis is indeed the man from now till evermore’_ and then they’ve keyboard smashed in all caps for ages, which, that’s intentional, that. You have to switch that on. And then—”

Harry laughed more than a little helplessly, “Stop, stop. You were right, let’s go back to nothing. Nothing is funny.” He paused, “How could they…Louis wasn’t even—he’s in America. How can half the world…” he trailed off incredulously.

“Well,” Nick couldn’t stop the slight smirk stretching across his face, “to be completely fair to half the world, it’s not as though little-you would have been inclined to turn _down_ that opportunity…” he trailed off, working hard to rein in his grin.

“Nicholas!” Harry shoved him in the side, and Nick mimed flailing, pretended to have been pushed hard enough that he fell off the sofa. Harry didn’t even blink, just took his spot and stretched his legs out along the cushions, blocking all the other seats. “It’s nice, that you think we’ve reached the point where we can joke about that,” but he was fighting off his own smile, so.

“Nice, is it?”

Harry was scrunching his nose, and Nick firmly reminded himself that the word adorable applied exclusively to things like babies and teddy bears and cartoon cats on the internet. “For a certain definition of the word?”

Nick laughed, decided that he both wasn’t equipped for a philosophical discussion on the various meanings of ‘nice’ and that he’d had enough of torturing Harry, at least for the next five minutes.

“Alright, alright. Subject dropped. Gone, goodbye. Let’s talk about my hangover instead. You look absolutely fine, I once again look like I’ve joined the undead, and I’m thinking that a massive plate of eggs is in order. We should go to that place, the one that does the sauce. God, I could go for that right now.”

“The fact that every part of that sentence made sense to me is maybe a little disturbing, but now I also want that sauce, so.” Harry grinned, “Thanks for that craving.”

“You are so very welcome. Really, what would you do w—Ooh!” Nick interrupted himself, which probably shouldn’t have been as common as it was. “They also do those pistachio lattes, although I suppose milk and whipped cream sound like the most unappealing possible foods right now. My brain knows they’re theoretically delicious though, so I’m torn. The constant struggle,” Nick yawned, stretching, “one might even go so far as _war_. Mouth saying ‘eat that!’, rest of me saying, you know what? Probably not.”

Harry had thrown his arm over his eyes, was still sprawled over the vast majority of Nick’s sofa. “You are the strangest person.”

“ _I’m_ the strangest person? Have you seen the trousers you’re wearing right now?”

Which was a tactical error on Nick’s part, he soon realised, because Harry then absolutely refused to change, wore them out to breakfast and straight through the entire day.

Of course the tabloids, when the pap pictures of the two of them at breakfast were inevitably published, didn’t mock him for them at all. Instead, they ran a bit about where people might find similar ones at a reasonable price.

Which, Nick despised him sometimes, he really did.

Wrathfully, deeply, and completely untruthfully.

 

.

 

A week later, Nick would have given a lot for Harry to be lying on his sofa, pink trousers and all.

Admittedly, it wasn't as though Harry leaving for his single promo had come as anything of a surprise. He'd done the first interview on Breakfast, after all—and Nick was masterfully ignoring the feeling he'd got when Harry had booked that, sounding like it was such a given for Nick to get the first play that really all there was to discuss was the date and time—and so he'd been watching the departure date get closer and closer for weeks.

He couldn't exactly claim it had snuck up on him, but it was still…

Who did he used to call when he wanted to lounge about doing nothing?

He wasn't lonely or anything, was hanging around with Fifi after work as always, seeing Aimee in the afternoons or at the weekend. But she had a kid, and it wasn't exactly as though she could drop everything at no notice to come lie on his couch and watch the new-and-firmly-not-improved Bake Off.

Obviously he also had Emily and Daisy and Miquita and Pixie and Alexa and everyone else, but they all either had families, or careers to focus on, or businesses to run, and it's not as though he actually wanted to suggest some fun outing that they'd be interested in taking a break for.

He just…wanted someone to come watch Bake Off.

(He absolutely could have found someone to come watch Bake Off.)

(He wanted someone _specific_ to come watch Bake Off, and—fuck, he needed to get out of the house next weekend, because if he spent the entire month and a bit like this he was going to drive himself absolutely round the bend.)

 

.

 

“Oh, _Nick_ ,” and suddenly he was being engulfed.

“Mum!” He squirmed, trying to disentangle himself from her arms, but she'd suddenly become as strong as a steel trap.

“What, you don't like hugs anymore?” Eileen sounded affronted, but Nick could hear the fondness behind it.

“I don't—course I like hugs.” He was fighting a losing battle. His mum was like a snake, the more you struggled, the tighter it got. “Strangulation, I'm a little less keen on,” he managed.

She huffed, “Well you'll forgive me, Nicholas! You haven't been home since,” she cut herself off as she finally stepped back, took him by the shoulders. “It's been ages! You don't call, you don't write—”

At least he knew his flare for the dramatic was an inherited trait.

“Honestly Mum, you'd think I'd been off to war! I'm absolutely fine.”

“Well, yes,” she conceded. “You've been doing much better.”

“Much…what do you mean? How do you—”

“A mother has her ways,” she said cryptically.

There was a beat of silence.

“Christ, is there anyone Aimee _hasn't_ been reporting back to?”

His mum laughed a bit, caught, before her face turned unusually serious, “You’ve got some good friends, Nick. Some really good friends.”

He blinked, thrown. He’d been ready for a quip about spies within his midst. He hadn’t quite been prepared for that. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat, “Yeah, I do.”

They stared at each other for a long moment before—thank god—they seemed to have mutually decided that this foray into the earnest should come to an end.

“Anyways! Come on in, here, grab your bag. I’ve made up your old room.” She gestured to the stairs, evidently concerned he’d managed to forget where it was. “Jane and Olivia are already here, and apparently Andy’s on his way? Though of course that could either mean he’s five minutes out or that he’s thinking about leaving his house soon, so a very helpful response that was to my question about dinner.” She rolled her eyes, and Nick smothered a grin. “How’s Harry doing?” She asked in the same breath, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Uh—good, I think? He’s in America, pretty sure doing radio or pre-records for the next couple days. Then…Fallon? I think is first? Not sure. I could check for you though,” he was already pulling out his phone.

 **Nick  
** 18:15  
  
_eileen wants to know when you’re doing your first telly performance, pretty sure after snl she now feels obliged to watch them all_

_that or she’s just stalking you, but either way  
_

  
“I’ll let you know when,” he gestured to his phone. “We’re ahead, timewise, so he’ll get back to me soon.”

His mum was looking at him a little strangely, “Right. Well, good then. I’ll put it on the calendar. Glad to hear you’re both well. He’ll have to come up and see us once he’s back on English soil.”

And then before Nick could place the odd note in her voice or figure out how to extricate Harry from that invitation, she was waving him upstairs, telling him to drop his bag and wash up if he needed to, because she could use his help with the potatoes unless he was too awfully busy with other things.

The tone she’d switched to half way through that sentence should probably have lost power over him when he was about seventeen. Given that he’d immediately rushed up, rinsed his hands, and come straight back to the stairs though, he was going to go with not.  

Ah well.

He bumped into his dad on the way down, was greeted with a pat to the shoulders that went on a bit longer than he expected, and a gruff, “I’ve picked up some of those mints that you like, in the green tin. Your mum, she’s probably stashed them away so you don’t spoil your dinner. I got three tins though, and no one else eats them, so they’ll be around somewhere.”

His dad aimed a slight smile in his direction, looked proud of himself for remembering one of the entries on Nick’s strange list of favourite things.

Nick wasn’t going to get emotional over three tins of mints, absolutely refused to acknowledge the lump building in his throat as reality. “Thanks, dad,” he said, the words coming out a bit more roughly than they normally did.

Pete nodded, turned to head up the stairs, and reached back at the last second to give Nick’s shoulder one last squeeze before continuing on.

And if Nick had to swallow a few times before wandering into the kitchen, well. It was dry in here, and who’s to say he wasn’t coming down with one of those awful out of season colds, anyways.

 

.

 

“So, you’ve been good then?” The question was innocent enough, but something about the tone had him raising an eyebrow. “It’s just…there have been a lot of pictures around. Of you. With, uh, with Harry?”

“Yes,” Nick responded warily.

“No! It’s good! We’re thrilled, obviously—”

“You’re ‘thrilled’?” Whoever said people over the age of ten couldn’t pull off air quotes had clearly not seen enough of the world.

“Well, you know, we’re happy for you! It's just, Andy and I, we were talking, and it's…it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, is all.”

“A _whirlwind_?” He parroted, once again.

“Stop that,” his sister was rolling her eyes, “you’re taking everything I say out of context.” And really, there was nothing quite like being the baby of the family.

“Out of—how am I taking anything out of context? I’ve literally just repeated exactly what you—”

She wasn’t listening, “It’s just, we’re a bit worried! It’s all very quick, and you were…” She trailed off, shook her head slightly, “It’s only been six months. You don’t want to jump into anything too soon and then regret it later—”

“Oh my god. No. _Jane_. For god’s sake,” because truly, this was his sister, “why is it always, at all times, everyone's default assumption that I'm sleeping with Harry Styles?”

She looked a bit too dubious for his liking.

“Christ, Jane. You believe everything you read in the papers now?”

“Of course not! But Nick,” she seemed to be trying to communicate something with the power of her gaze, “well…this is Harry.”

He refused to let that be an explanation, shook his head a bit and widened his eyes, classic I've-no-idea-what-you’re-on-about.

Jane sighed, “He’s always been a bit of…an exception, where you’re concerned.”

“An _exception_ _—_ ” Jane huffed at his outrage.    

“Alright, alright. Forget I said anything. Everything’s absolutely fine, you’ve got it all handled.”

“Jane,” and you'd think he'd have felt less at a loss, given the number of people he'd had this conversation with over the years, “everything _is_ fine. Harry's been…he's been amazing about this whole thing, but really, that's all.”

There was a pause before Jane nodded, either convinced or deciding she didn't want to push it, “Well, good then.” But if Nick had hoped that was going to be the end of it, he'd have been disappointed. “You should get dressed up, go out.”

“I've been out! That's where all the pictures—” And really, why did he even bother to speak.

“Call up some of your old model harem.” Nick all but choked, and Jane talked right over him. “Best way to get over someone is to get under someone else!”

“You know, sometimes I maintain this delusion that we're a normal family, who have normal, sibling-appropriate conversations, but thankfully moments like this come along—”

Jane was laughing, “I mean it! Sleep with 10 different men, there's nothing more satisfying after a breakup than successfully pulling—”

“This is truly one of the most distressing conversations I've ever had.”

“Well, I was going to drag Andy in here with me, so you can be thankful for small mercies.”

Christ.

Nick sometimes forgot why he usually only came home during the holidays, got nostalgic and vowed to make more of an effort. He usually lasted about a day at his parents place before it all came rushing back. Bunch of lovable weirdos, the Grimshaws were.

“Really though, just…be careful. A rebound never feels like a rebound when it's happening, but then suddenly you wake up and realize you're not over your ex and either you get hurt or he gets hurt or…I dunno. It's,” she cast around for a second, “messy, would be especially so with a good friend. And just—” she caught his eye, “I don't want you to get hurt again. You've had…you've had to deal with enough mess.”

“Aw, Janey,” he reached out, slung his arm around her and pulled her into his side. “This took such a turn for the emotional! Very un-Grimshaw-like. Let's have a drink, feel a bit more like ourselves, burying our problems in alcohol.”

She snorted, “Honestly, you're as bad as dad. Say one nice thing and it’s straight for the wines—”

 

.

 

Olivia, bless her soul, said a grand total of nothing about his love life or Harry the entire weekend. They watched Big Brother reruns and laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, drank rosé and ate too much popcorn, and maybe it shouldn’t have felt like an accomplishment, having one family member who raised not even a single eyebrow at his recent life choices, but here Nick was nonetheless.

 

.

 

London felt almost calm after Oldham, despite the relative size of the cities and the fact that London was likely one of the least calm places on earth.   

It was his normal brand of bustle though, nothing like trying to assure his family that he was completely fine and needed no help, but also that he’d allowed himself the time to properly mourn his relationship, wasn’t just pushing everything below the surface.

It shouldn’t have been nearly as difficult as it had been, and he probably shouldn’t have left feeling like he’d just had to play the role of himself in some sort of draining and emotionally heavy film, but _shouldn’t_ and _didn’t_ were two very different things.

Harry was still away, of course, would be jetting around the world for weeks yet, but Nick had made that comment to him on the phone last night, and Harry had laughed, declared that he’d be willing to play the role of himself whenever Nick got around to dramatizing his autobiography.

It was…it was almost odd, the way that they were keeping in touch. Not that it was new, because it wasn’t, but.

It felt like seven years ago.

It felt like phone calls at ridiculous hours of the night, when Harry used to call after his shows, always forgetting that Nick was hours ahead. He was better about that now, always rang before eleven London time, but it still felt like way back when. Like Harry across the ocean, calling from the bunk of a One Direction tour bus.

They were using different phones with different numbers, Harry was in hotels with a different band, Nick was in his house rather than his flat, and there was, admittedly, a lot that had changed since then.

Still though, Nick thought, scrolling through what seemed like a ridiculous amount of chat history to have accumulated in a couple weeks—there was a lot that hadn’t.

 

.

 

 **Haz (◕‿◕✿)  
** 13:15

_There’s a cloud here that i swear looks like a coiled snake_

_You’d think that we’d have the best clouds_

_How could america have better clouds, we have so much practice!_

_But these are amazing_

_Here i’ll try to send you a pic_

 

Nick was staring at a slightly blurry picture of a cloud that looked, to be honest, like a cloud, biting his lip against a really stupid smile. It was just past eight in America, Harry had probably just woken up.

Nick couldn’t quite figure out why these messages felt so valuable to him, nonsense though they were. Harry kept texting him about his day, about what he’d had for his tea or a song he’d heard that reminded him of something, another silver ring he was thinking of buying or an especially funny meme he’d somehow come across.

If he’d had to guess, Nick would have thought that the kind of messages they used to send—checking in, seeing how the other was, making plans to catch up—would have been worth more, but somehow…somehow this felt like a stream of consciousness.

This felt like he was the person Harry was sharing every passing thought with.

Harry didn’t—he didn’t _do_ that. Nick was the one that liked to fill silences for the sake of it, that loved to chat and liked meaningless conversations, because they meant that someone cared enough to share whatever was on their mind.

And yet Harry was texting him about clouds.

Which.

 

 **Nick  
** 13:18

_Lmao busy day?? :P_

_But yes_

_Looks even more like a snake than a real snake tbh_

_You’re a wizard, Harry_

 

Which, if he were being honest, was quite a feeling.

 

.

 

 **Haz (◕‿◕✿)  
** 20:38

_You'd think it would be ice cream that I'd be eating nonstop, because italy_

_But actually it's been cheese?_

**  
****Nick**  
20:41

_You realise you're a singer_

_Actually what am I saying. Fuck it, continue living your best life. Can't believe i was about to advocate against cheese_

_But also if you don't eat at least one lemon gelato on a cobbled street in the sun i’m disowning you_

**  
****Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
20:42

_I appreciate that neither of us thought trevi fountain_

_Cheese!_

_Ice cream!_

**  
****Nick**  
20:45

_Living life right_

  
**Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
22:57

_Sorry! sound check took an age, you're probably asleep by now_

_2 hours of fiddling, 3 minute performance_

_But yes fully agreed and may your dreams be filled with unending gelato and free of any cheese-induced nightmares_

 

.

 

 **Nick  
** 16:13

_So?? Did you survive?_

  
**Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
17:24

_I'm honestly not sure_

_The next time jeff tries to tell me that flying tokyo to buenos aires isn't going to feel much longer than LA to london_

_It's your job to remind me of this moment_

**  
****Nick**  
17:27

_Haha aww poor jetlagged popstar_

  
**Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
17:28

_I can hear your lack of sympathy from across multiple continents nicholas_

_To be fair tho, South America_

_Next few days are going to be sick_

**  
****Nick**  
19:45

_Yes exactly. It's hard to be you :P_

_Oh and that reminds me! That new mexican place we were looking at?_

_As good as we thought it was going to be_

_Frozen margarita pie may be my new reason for living. Disappointingly didn't actually look like a margarita, but it was weirdly stunning?_

_Gordon Ramsay would have approved_

**  
****Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
19:57

_!!!!!_

_ >:( _

_Can't believe you went without me_

_We're going again when I get back, and you're going to pretend you've never been_

_I'm expecting oscar winning surprise on your face when the dessert arrives. Start practicing now_

**  
****Nick**  
20:27

_Excuse me!_

_You're about to be in actual mexico, I think you'll survive_

_We can definitely go tho. You pay and i’ll look as surprised as you like :P_

  
And he sent a gif of Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants looking shocked, because, y’know, adulthood.

 

.

 

 **Haz (◕‿◕✿)  
** 14:07

_I'm thinking that I should add “y’all” into my vocabulary_

_What a brilliant word_

**  
****Nick**  
14:17

_Harry Styles Takes Advantage of the Old Adage “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” to Justify Being Drunk in Texas at 8am_

_More at 6_

  
**Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
14:19

_No!! It's just…it's nice_

_Feel like I'm in a film_

**  
****Nick**  
14:23

_Alright cowboy_

_But if you're going I start saying y'all I demand that you do so in full hat/chaps/boots regalia_

_So_

_Start shopping_

_Actually I demand a set too. Get 2_

**  
****Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
14:27

_Ace. Wondered what I was going to do with all my extra pairs of chaps_

  
**Nick**  
14:31

_Well you know what they say_

_I live to serve_

  
**Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
14:32

_Not sure that's what they say_

_But I'll take it ;)_

 

.

 

 **Haz (◕‿◕✿)  
** 21:29

_Not sure why I never spent any time in Seattle_

_This city is fucking amazing_

**  
****Nick**  
21:35

_Possibly because Seattle is London but in America_

_And you wanted a tan?_

  
**Haz (◕‿◕✿)**  
21:39

_Very shortsighted of 20yo me_

_It was only a 2hr flight!_

_We should have come here when you were over visiting in LA. You'd love it here_

_We’ll go someday_

_In summer_

_For the Seafair!_

_You'll come, won't you?_

  
Nick had to swallow a few times.

  
**Nick**  
21:57

_Course I will Haz_

_For the Seafair_

 

.

 

 **Haz (◕‿◕✿)  
** 19:17

_Looks like my flight is going to be a couple days early!_

_Was going to stop for a few days in LA but decided against it_

_I get in early morning on saturday. are you home if I come by around 11?_

  
Nick blinked at the messages as they came through, one right after the next. Was he free, if Harry skipped his LA vacation to come over to Nick’s house this Saturday morning, hours after getting back from an exhausting five week scramble around the world?

He started typing a quip about having to check his calendar, erased it, tried again for a joke about how needing to clear his massively busy schedule was a sacrifice he was willing to make, deleted it again, and then rolled his eyes, because sometimes he appalled even himself. And of course now there had been three little dots blinking on Harry’s screen for ages, and—god, he needed to get a grip.

 **  
****Nick**  
19:21

_Yes._

 

.

 

“I want to dance.”

They were lying across his bed watching the Simpsons, and Nick would have been content to stay there for the next year or so without moving, but he could already see exactly how this was going to go down. A week back and it was as if Harry hadn’t been gone a second.

Nick flopped backwards, not at all dramatically. “You always want to dance. Which in and of itself is, y’know, fine. The appalling part is that no one even cares how bad you are at it. Can’t you just picture,” he ran his hands through the air, “ _‘Harry Styles starts interpretive dance youtube channel, gains 50 billion subscribers in a day’_ , and everyone just nods, because obviously that would happen—”

“Let’s not…let’s not get carried away. It’d probably cap off at 20 million, tops,” Harry was smirking, doing an incredibly poor job at keeping the laughter out of his voice. He was also up on his knees on the bed and starting to bounce up and down slightly, because apparently he and Arlo had achieved a similar level of maturity.

And because he wanted to go dancing, apparently.

Nick sighed, levered himself up, and went in search of a better shirt. “Ask, and thou shalt receive,” he muttered darkly, in the way of people everywhere who wished that whatever they were saying didn't ring quite so true.

Harry’s smile was huge, and even after a glance in the mirror that revealed the state of Nick’s hair, he couldn’t bring himself to risk dimming it.

“Loulou’s?”

“Loulou’s.”

(The fact that it was going to have to be ‘Harry Styles and guest’ was well made up for by the absolute guarantee that there would be no pictures taken of them the second they cleared the doors.)   

 

.

 

“Have you really not seen Downton Abbey?”

“I swear, my entire life is just an endless string of people asking me ‘ _Have you really not seen’_ whatever, and me having to say no, no I haven’t, I’ve seen Bridesmaids five hundred times and that’s literally it—”

Harry wasn’t even trying to bite back his grin, “What a trial that must be for you, truly.”

“I'm about to be forced to sit through six straight series of serious, need-to-pay-attention telly, aren't I?” 

Harry's mouth hummed and hawed and muttered, as was his way, but his eyes were hopeful.

And who needed to do anything they enjoyed on their next two consecutive weekends, really, when instead they could stare at a screen so as not to disappoint someone else's eyes.

 

.

 

Because timing and remembering dates had never been Nick’s forte, the Valentino show was actually almost three months from that day when he’d brought it up. Fortunately or tragically, depending on how you looked at it (Nick was going back and forth), that put it right in the middle of Harry’s break before the tour, so he was very much home when it rolled around.

Nick had made such a thing of it, was the problem, had had that whole rambling conversation with himself. Plus this was Harry, so it wasn’t like he’d have forgotten even if it had been an offhand invitation. It was just easier to stick with the plan, no matter what Aimee’s eyebrows had done when she’d found out who he was bringing.

And really, what an overreaction. Everything was fully under control and he knew exactly what he was doing. 

That feeling of confidence lasted all the way until Harry showed up at his door mid-afternoon drinking a smoothie and wearing a hoodie.

Which, that was just great.

Nick could feel his face doing a comical impression of dismay, “Haz, darling, that is a grey sweatshirt—one that says Packers across the front and is fraying at the hem, even—and you’re not carrying a garment bag.”

Nick had tried on every article of clothing he owned three times over by this point, which admittedly was his standard practice whenever he was going to a fashion event and decided he hated his entire wardrobe and needed to lose ten pounds in three hours. Those sort of things probably didn’t happen to Harry, but…that was a hoodie.  

“I was,” Harry bit back a grin, “I was reading this article in _Teen Now_ , and apparently I can wear anything and make it look like high fashion, so I figured, may as well go for comfort, yeah?”

Nick blinked, “I would definitely have a witty response to that, but you said ‘Teen Now’ and suddenly everything flew out of my brain except this incredibly vivid image of you sitting cross-legged on your bed pouring over top secret love confessions and tips on how to tell if she _really truly likes you back_ —”

“It’s like you were there, really,” Harry’s smirk was reaching dangerous levels. “Where do you think I’m getting my inspiration for the album?” 

Nick snorted, because god, can you imagine, and Harry wandered past as he continued. “Actually I just couldn’t figure out…all my really nice things are Gucci or YSL and I couldn’t—is that, like, bad form? To show up to a show in someone else’s clothes? I should have asked Harry to get me something, but I didn’t and then it was too late. And then I thought, you know who probably has event appropriate clothing and couldn’t possibly be wearing all of it at once tonight?”

Christ. 

Harry wasn’t wandering aimlessly. He was heading for Nick’s bedroom, for Nick’s closet. It wasn’t that Harry meant to go in workout clothes, it was that he meant to go wearing something of Nick’s, and oh, this was…this was so much worse.

He could hear rustling, hangers being pushed along the rail, and then Harry was coming back into view, doing a little twirl and making an expectant face, since apparently this was Nick’s life now. He suddenly felt for the gossip writer a bit, because Harry, in nothing more than black boots, his usual jeans, and a shirt that Nick had paid far too much for, was carrying the look off better than the mannequin he’d chosen that button-up off of.

How could a shirt look better on a human being than it had on the mannequin? That wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in reality, not without makeup artists and clever camera angles and photoshop, and yet here they were.

Harry bloody Styles, rolled out of bed and made the rest of the world look bad.

“Passable,” he deigned, desperately wishing for sunglasses to stop himself from saying a whole lot more with his eyes. Maybe one of those masks, like they wore for welding, just to be safe.

Harry’s eyes lit up, “One might even go so far as _average_?”

Life was unjust.

Nick could feel his hands fluttering, couldn’t seem to stop himself from all but shooing Harry out the door he’d basically just walked in through. “Average face, four nipples, scented candles galore. What choice did the world have but to bend to your will?” he asked, rather nonsensically. “Anyways, late lunch? I won’t even come and ritually murder you if you spill something on that shirt! Promise, cross my heart, I’ll cap it off at a light maiming—”

“Would you—” Harry was laughing, batting Nick away where he was in full dad-mode, barely refraining from pulling Harry’s arms through the sleeves and zipping up his coat.

“Well hurry up then! I’m starved!”

And if it was a bit of a scramble to get his shoes on, flag down a cab, decide on something suitably not bloating to eat right before heading into a room full of people too skinny to be fair, and make it to the show on time?

Well, at least he wasn’t thinking about the damned shirt anymore.

 

.

 

_Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw, 36, and former One Direction member Harry Styles, 26, attend Saturday’s Valentino launch celebration (pictured above). The young music star accompanied Grimshaw to the event in one of the pair’s scores of recent outings, only adding fuel to the fire of speculation over the closeness of this famous friendship._

_The sightings follow on the back of Grimshaw’s abruptly broken engagement of earlier this year, as well as the rumours circulating that he will not be asked to renew his contract after over 7 years at the helm of Breakfast._

_Life hasn’t been all doom and gloom for The Breakfast Show host, however, with him seemingly out and about with his many high-society friends now more so than ever. Not that we can blame him! After all, if we could convince Harry Styles to drop everything and tag along with us wherever we may go, we’re not sure we’d be inclined to stop ourselves either._

_Grimshaw has said publically that the support of friends like Styles, Rita Ora, Kate Moss, model Daisy Lowe, and London ‘It-Girl’ Alexa Chung has been “invaluable”, and that he’s “grateful for all their love during a year that hasn’t quite gone as planned.” We’re thinking that this must be where we went wrong in dealing with our bad breakups and possible career setbacks in the past. If only we’d thought to recruit our A-list friends to get us into clubs and visit us at work (pictured below: Harry Styles coming and going from the BBC Broadcasting House), we might have done a whole lot better._

_While admittedly only time will tell what is in store for the thirty-six year old DJ, we’re glad for him on at least one front. He’s now proven, if nothing else, that he knows how to make the best of a bad situation—and look great doing it! He and Styles made quite the splash upon arriving at the Valentino show and subsequent after party over the weekend. Not many people could pull off a suit like that standing next to someone almost a decade their junior. Grimmy, our hat’s off to you._

 

.

 

“Three times! They mentioned my age _three times_ in an article that was about five sentences long! The thirty-six year old DJ, who is thirty-six, is out and about taking advantage of his friends at the archaically old age of thirty-six—”

 

.

 

Gossip magazines notwithstanding, Nick had absolutely no complaints about Harry channelling his eighteen year old self and deciding to drop by the BBC.

He'd come in that morning, and for some reason Nick hadn’t noticed right away that he'd only had four drinks with him, had handed them around to him and Fiona and Will and Tina.

Admittedly it was only just past ten and he’d wrapped up the show seconds before Harry had come in bearing gifts, but still, it was odd. They weren’t going straight to lunch. Harry was going to hang around while Nick was in production meetings, so Nick would have assumed he’d want something for the wait. Unless he’d had his on the way, but that didn’t seem overly likely considering how hot Nick’s still was.

“Did you come all the way here to bring coffee and not get one for yourself?”

Harry’s bit his lip, and Nick couldn’t tell if he was sheepish or trying not to laugh. Possibly both. “No, I…I did. It was just, I was going through security. And you know Henry, with the beard?” Nick nodded, could already feel his lips turning up into a smile. “Well he just…he looked so tired, and—don’t laugh at me!” but Harry’s face was scrunching up too, so the effect was a bit wasted. 

Nick took a second to let that sink in.

“Just so we’re clear,” his grin was practically splitting his face, and Fifi was doing a good job of pretending to be engrossed in her phone, but he could see her smothering a smile. “Henry with the beard at security is downstairs sipping your latte as we speak?”

If Harry was trying to school his expression, he was not succeeding. “If you must know, it was an iced coffee with coconut milk, no sugar,” he sniffed dramatically, still couldn’t keep a straight face, “But…yeah, basically.”

Nick was gleeful, “Sounds delicious.”

He was tempted to go back into the studio and tell this story with Clara, because it was just literally that amazing, but thankfully realised that launching into an epic about Harry bringing him coffee whilst live on the radio was probably actually the very last thing he wanted to do. Plus, somehow it would have lost something if it was just ‘a friend’ having given away their drink to a complete stranger, was only the most incredible thing to have happened this entire week because it was oh so very _Harry_.

Almost as if he’d heard that thought, Harry pulled a face, and Nick responded in kind before schooling his expression, because this was his place of employment and he was an adult, despite any evidence one might have been able to produce to the contrary.

Fiona was checking her watch, as clear a signal as if she’d actually said _any day now, Grim_ , and he nodded, caught Harry’s eye again and gestured with his phone.

Harry twitched the corner of his mouth up, and said “Yeah, course, just let me know whenever,” as he wandered out of the room to say hi to Adele and whoever else it was he wanted to see.

And Nick really did try to pay attention then, to be efficient in getting the prep done for the next show.

Still, by the time they were wrapping up and he was texting Harry to meet him by the back entrance, Nick was pretty sure he’d already forgotten everything they’d discussed. Fifi was going to be delighted.

Lunch was fantastic though. They got heaping bowls of madly healthy salads, lettuce piled with quinoa and edamame and chopped veggies, dressed in a way that actually made it all incredibly delicious. Naturally, he took five identical pictures for instagram, spent way too long choosing which one to post, and then took even longer picking a filter and fiddling with the percentages until the salad looked markedly better, but not overly fake.

Ah social media, his one true love.

He also felt fully justified in having Harry film him while they were at the gym afterwards and adding it all to his story, because he was having a healthy day, and that was something to be celebrated.

By the time they were sitting down to dinner, after running and weights at the club and then walking around London—and Nick would swear sometimes that he was more tired after shopping than he was after working out—he’d decided that he’d filled his health quota for the day.

He was laughing, sitting at a restaurant they both loved, surrounded by a virtual sea of shopping bags, and if he wanted coconut shrimp then he was damn well having them.

Their waitress looked a little taken aback at the vehemence in his tone when he ordered them, but earlier she’d smiled and said her name was Grace perfunctorily and without pausing, even after the spark of recognition Nick had seen in her eyes, so he was willing to forgive her a lot.

She’d just come back to set the appetizer down on the table when one of her co-workers bustled past, hands full of tea lights, smiled distractedly and told her, “It’s quarter past, John needs you to,” and jerked her head towards the back room.

Whatever John needed was evidently urgent, because Grace was gone as soon as she’d double checked that they were all set for water and the like.

“Oh, it’s…you don’t—” Nick wasn’t fast enough, and Grace’s rather harassed looking friend had already set a candle down, flicked the lighter like a pro, smiled quickly at them, and moved on to the next table.

“Thank you!” Harry called, because he was revolting like that, always overflowing with kindness.

Nick, on the other hand, was reaching for his drink.

The alcohol warmed his throat on the way down, thankfully made it the slightest bit easier to ignore the fact that the lights had just been dimmed.

Harry was laughing at him, “What, you don’t like candles all of a sudden? Why are you,” he pulled a face of exaggerated horror, eyes wide as saucers and mouth pulled down. He looked like the emoji you could make with a capital D and a colon, and Nick couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him in return.

“Course I like—it’s just. Don't you…” he trailed off. Had Harry somehow not noticed? Or did he just not care? Nick supposed he might be overreacting. Everything was fine. The dimmed lights and table for two and candles flickering everywhere, that was totally normal. Friends ended up in these situations all the time. Hell, this had happened to him before, with Fiona, and it had been proper hilarious.

Everything was fine.

Harry was smirking, “Have some more shrimp, Nicholas, you’re blubbering.”

Which—was entirely fair.

Nick stuffed one in his mouth, chewed slowly, reminded his heart rate that there was no reason for it to have picked up speed, that he ate dinner with Harry all the bloody time, that they’d been to this restaurant recently even, and there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary going on.

He also took a moment to firmly remind himself that there would be no justification for ‘accidentally’ blowing out the candle, or somehow shifting his chair so he wasn’t staring directly into Harry’s eyes and bumping knees under the table.

All was well just as it was.

He was managing to keep up his side of the light hearted conversation, mentally thanking anyone who was listening that bickering was such an instinct for him that he probably could have started ribbing Harry about his menu choices and checkered trousers in his sleep.

So, good then.

Everything was fine. Their main courses had arrived, he was being nourished. No stress here. He was completely one hundred percent okay, no one needed to worry at all, and—

“Did—did that woman just take our picture?” Nick’s voice had probably been calmer, but truly, he was good. Things had never been more under control.

“Probably,” Harry shrugged, unconcerned.

Nick boggled slightly, “ _Probably_ —how are you, this is…” He'd maybe had more success composing sentences in the past.

“Would you calm down? When have we ever gone out and, like, escaped unphotographed? Just…have a ravioli. They're butternut squash, you love butternut squash.” 

“Have a ravioli, he says,” Nick muttered mutinously, though he did, in fact, steal one off Harry's plate. And wouldn't that be a headline for the ages, Nick Grimshaw eating pasta off Harry Styles' plate by candlelight at what suddenly seemed like the world’s smallest table. God.

A different waitress stopped by, “Everything alright here?”

Harry’s smile was huge, thrilled when he should have been self-conscious, not that Harry had ever had a self-conscious moment in his entire bloody life. “Everything is absolutely wonderful. Thank you.”

The poor girl never stood a chance, flushed right to the roots of her hair, and truly, he didn’t blame her one bit. The dimples were a lot. He empathized completely.

“Wonderful,” Nick agreed. “Unrelatedly, whenever you have a moment, could I possibly have another of these?” He gestured to his still-full drink, and bless her, because she didn't even blink before nodding that she'd bring him a second one and making her escape.

Alcohol was perhaps not the wisest decision, but—Nick almost laughed—no one, literally no one, had ever accused him of being wise where Harry was concerned.

And if he wasn't going to be wise, then smashed was the next best thing.

 

.

 

In a turn of events that surprised absolutely no one, smashed was not the next best thing.

They were late to Pixie and George’s place, which in and of itself was absolutely fine. They were also slightly off their heads, laughing at something that Nick couldn’t even properly remember but definitely had not been that funny, which theoretically also would have been fine.

Except they were just drunk enough to be stumbly, and so Nick overbalanced a bit when he stood up from in front of the fridge, and Harry lunged forwards to steady the carafe of water he was holding before it all ended up on the floor.

Which still would have been fine.

Harry wasn’t exactly sober himself though, and his hand landed on Nick’s forearm instead, gripped there tightly. The two of them ended up just sort of staring at each other over the hum of the appliances and the sounds of muffled laughter from the other room.

Nick had a wild moment of simultaneously thinking _‘Don’t blink!’_ lest Harry transform into a carnivorous female statue from a fantasy show, and _wow tumblr wasn’t wrong about his eyes being a truly startling shade of green_ before the door to their left banged open. They leapt apart, startled as if they’d been doing something other than holding a jug of water, and—shit. 

Pixie was standing there with a look on her face that Nick really didn’t like, he’d quite literally just jumped away from Harry as if he’d been burned, and the whole thing was just…it was all a bit too bad-film for Nick’s liking.

Thankfully he chose his friends at least partially based on how well they were able to soldier on through potentially awkward situations, and Pixie’s, “Alright, ducks?” broke whatever moment was threatening to stretch.

He glanced at Harry for a fraction of a second, saw him staring right back, and directed his laugh in Pixie’s direction, “Yeah, brilliant. Soz, I’m just a little,” he spun his hand, “and I almost spilled an entire pitcher of water on your floor, but—crisis averted! So, yeah, no need to cry over…uh, not spilled water?” he finished, far more tentatively than he’d begun.

Pixie, angel that she was, said nothing further about the leaping, taking the pitcher from him and hugging it defensively, “Don’t you dare,” she was grinning, and maybe her eyebrows were still slightly raised, but she was clearly willing to let whatever that had been go. Thank god.

He got his much needed water, and the rest of the night passed without incident, Pixie’s refusal to let him near any of her expensive glassware notwithstanding.

The next morning, sober, Nick was almost tempted to believe he’d imagined the whole thing. He might have done, too, written it off as some weird half-dream, except he was holding the milk when Harry wandered out of the guest room—holding it steady, no tipping or wobbling jugs for him, thanks much—and the first thing Harry said was, “Glad to see you’re feeling a little less…hand-swirly,” while very clearly trying to keep a straight face.

Which.

Nick laughed, loudly, and perhaps edging just the slightest bit into hysteria.  
  
(Really though, what were friends for if not ignoring any hints of mania that threatened to peak through peels of laughter.) 

Glad he was feeling less hand-swirly, indeed.

 

.

 

“Where’s the boyfriend?” Jack called with a sly grin about a month later, as Nick approached the table the hostess had directed him towards. Nick was going to respond—with what, he had no idea, but he was fully confident that he would have said something eventually, ideally implying that he didn’t know who he’d meant—but Aimee beat him to it.

Nick had a moment where he almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing, because she and Pixie and George and Ian and Miquita weren’t laughing uproariously. They weren’t even grinning, nevermind joining in the ribbing. Aimee was nudging Jack in the side with her elbow, rolling her eyes, and saying what sounded like _“honestly, they get enough of that from the papers”_ , except surely he must have heard wrong. He was a bit far to make the words out, and his lipreading skills had always left a lot to be desired, so he must have just…made that up, out of wishful thinking.

Or, not even wishful thinking. He didn’t think he’d have wished for that exactly. Auditory hallucination, maybe?

Because surely Aimee, of all people—Aimee, who he adored because she made it her life’s mission to keep him from taking himself too seriously, who lived to tease him for anything and everything—should have been the first person to fan the flames of that line of conversation.

Instead she’d doused it out within seconds, and Pixie had done an admirable job of sounding completely casual as she steered the table’s conversation in an entirely different direction, but she’d still clearly done so.

Nick blinked.

What had just—

He should have been the one rolling his eyes at the good natured teasing, enduring the jokes his friends made about him and Harry, same as he had been for months. He should have been affecting put upon sighs and declaring that he couldn’t trust a single person in his life not to constantly take the piss.

That hadn’t been him, though.

That had been every single one of the people who knew him best at this dinner, rolling their eyes and completely passing up the opportunity to add their own two cents.

Now that he thought about it, it had actually been a few weeks since the last time any of them had made a joke about it.

They’d…

They’d stopped teasing him.

They’d stopped teasing him, and he’d only just noticed, and why would they have—

He took a deep breath, sat down, and took a rather large gulp of water. Hopefully he’d be able to just push the thought from his mind, concentrate on dinner, and ideally never have it surface again.

Because there was really only one reason that his nearest and dearest would suddenly decide the topic of him and Harry was off limits, and oh holy god Nick was too old for this level of stress.

 

.

 

As it turned out, it was easier than expected to keep out of his mind, mainly because Nick was just suddenly so busy.

He hadn't exactly been the most free to start with, but out of nowhere it seemed like he was DJing and doing the telly and presenting at shows literally any time he wasn't on the radio, and time just…flew.

It felt like only a couple weeks had passed since Harry's single dropped, but in reality they were going on four months by now. Hell, the album had come out since then, Harry had been back on the show, and at this point they were far closer to the start of the tour than anything.

Which was an incredible boon, actually, because the promo that Harry had started doing was _making Nick’s life_.

Not that he wasn’t excited for Harry’s tour on its own merits—he absolutely was, thought this album was excellent and was once again bursting with pride—but the press that was starting to gear up was such an added bonus.

It was just…it was _amazing_ , because he’d never found Harry in interviews to be very different than Harry in real life. More guarded, obviously, but that was to be expected, and other than that it generally just felt like having a chat. He finally got it now, though, what people were always on about. Because these? Were absolutely fucking hilarious. Works of art.

Harry had sounded so natural on Breakfast, talking about his inspiration for the album. How it was about love, but not necessarily in the way you’d expect, because mostly it wasn’t about romance. He’d said it was about the connections you made with all sorts of different people that were each so important, could take so many different forms and make you feel so many different things. That the cohesion of the album wasn’t so much that the songs all sounded the same tonally, or that it told one continuous story, but rather that each track spoke to a different kind of connection, and weaved together they made a whole.

Nick had thought it was quite deep at the time, had said that he thought the sentiment was going to mean a lot to a lot of people, and to be honest he stood by that assessment.

It was just—that’s all that Harry was saying. He was repeating the same answers over and over again, and it was deeply, profoundly hilarious.

Nick was debating bringing in a new feature. _Which words did Harry use today to make the words “this album is mostly about connections” sound microscopically different?_

It would be a smash hit, he was sure. The next Showquizness.

And the one time Harry had deviated had been equally incredible. Nick wanted “I just…I feel like the music is about…well, the thing is, what can you really say about music. Is it actually just about one thing? Everyone is going to, y'know, read it differently…and how could you truly say one way or the other, which one is more valid?” transcribed and framed on his wall.

He was delighted, was the point.

He was delighted at the promo and excited for Harry and he wasn't at all conscious that the tour was going to stretch over five months.

He wasn't thinking about the fact that five weeks had felt like a long time, and he definitely wasn't thinking about how this time it was going to be over four times as long before Harry got a break to come home.

He was excited, because Harry lived for this, and when Harry was excited—jittery and talking about setlists incessantly and sending random pictures of outfits that he saw and liked to Harry to see if he could get similar pieces for the tour wardrobe—it was contagious.

Everyone who met Harry came away excited for him, because that's who Harry was. You met him, and you thought ‘huh’, and then you spent a lot of time wondering how someone could actually be as truly good as they appeared.

So Nick was excited.

(He also turned down a DJing gig that would probably have been a really good move career wise because it was scheduled for the night before Harry left, and Nick absolutely could not bring himself to plan on spending it with anyone else.)

(But still, he was excited.)

 

.

 

“You sold out a tour with the Dreaded Tertiary Album! This is a big occasion!”

Harry laughed, “The dreaded—” He shook his head, smiling. “Grim, that was months ago. There’s a break between selling tickets and the actual tour,” and he paused, smirking like always did before he told a joke, so pleased with himself, and Nick really should not be so endeared. He could already feel himself starting to smile, and why was he _like this_? How could he not be immune after nine fucking years? “Maybe I could find someone who works in music and they could give you a crash course?”

“All right, you bloody brat,” considering he talked for a living, Nick would have thought he’d be better at keeping the fondness out of his tone. “ _Belated_ sold-out-tour celebration then. Last hurrah before you abandon me for five months to live the life of the rich and famous!” 

Harry was shaking his head, but he was also grinning and walking towards Nick’s closet, so Nick figured he’d won. “Fine, but I’m borrowing a shirt. I’m not going out in a vest when you’ve done,” he waved his hand up and down to apparently encompass what Nick had _done_ , which, if he were honest, had mainly involved gelling his hair and picking the first thing he saw off the hanger, but. Flattering, nonetheless.

“Please, they’d hand you a style award if you showed up in a sack. _Revolutionary,_ how he’s taken burlap and just, really _elevated_ it, given it that extra je-ne-sais-quoi!”

Harry was snickering, “You’re such a dick.”

“Ooh, snappy comeback, Styles. A classic.” Harry tossed a balled up jumper at his head and he ducked, laughing. “Watch the hair! We don’t all wake up looking like we just strolled off a runway!”

There was a dangerous pause.

“Speaking of…” There was a very specific grin spreading across Harry’s face.

“No,” Nick shook his head, “No way. That was a one time deal. We’re not going to Metropolis, and even if we do, I’m not getting up there. Absolutely no chance.”

 

.

 

They went to Metropolis.

 

.

 

Harry was laughing so hard his hands were shaking, “How many _faces of British celebrity_ does it take to change a door lock?”

“Not…we’re not,” Nick gasped, “ _unlock_ the door, we’re not ‘changing the door lock’.” Harry’s cheeks hurt, he was laughing so hard. Nick’s voice went up in imitation, “Ought to be exercising _proper comportment_! What _will_ the Queen think?”

“I can’t tell if this is actually the funniest thing that’s ever happened to us, or,” Harry had to stop for a minute, was almost doubled over, “or if we’re just,” he snorted, “ _really_ smashed—”

“We can’t be! We’ve had like two drinks a piece, and that was at the first place. We’re not writing this one off as Pimms-induced. This is going down in history,” Nick was cackling, sounded like he might have gone on if not for dissolving into laughter again.

“Can’t believe we were drinking Pimms, honestly.”

“Oi! That’s not on me, _sister_ ,” Harry couldn’t believe Nick remembered that, starting giggling anew. He wasn’t going to survive this night. Here lies Harry, laughed himself to death on Nick Grimshaw’s front steps. “ _‘What have you got that’s pink?’_ You’re such an embarrassment, can’t take you anywhere.”

Nick finally just grabbed the keys from his hands, got the door unlocked, and they stumbled through.

“Oh please, _I’m_ the embarrassment? It’s like the lady said, _you expect this sort of thing from the young hooligans, but you are a national representative!_ How dare you go out to a nightclub—where, I might add, I am also in attendance—and, and exist, or whatever it was we did that offended her so badly.” He almost couldn’t make it through his sentence, could barely breathe.

“You realise you were the hooligan in this scenario?”

Harry pulled a face like the two year old he evidently still was, stuck his tongue out. “Obviously. I mean really, look at all my tattoos. _Disgraceful_!”

“It’s a good thing she didn’t catch a glimpse of my nipple.”

And he probably hadn’t meant that quite like it sounded, but Harry burst into laughter all over again, “Which one?” he wheezed, reached over to tweak Nick’s actual nipple through his shirt. Nick didn’t see it coming in time, too busy poking at the tattoo, and he squawked loudly in protest.

“Harry!” Nick was laughing, “God!” he was batting Harry’s hands away, smile huge. “Just came out to have a good time, feeling _very_ attacked right now.”

Harry’s eyes were blurry, and he reached up to dash away tears of laughter.

Nick wasn’t doing much better. “Just—stay here. I’ve got to wee, try not to break anything in the twenty seconds I’m gone.”

Harry had bent down to unzip his boots, straightened up in outrage, “That was one vase! Six years ago!” He hollered after Nick’s retreating back.

“What can I say, I’m an arbitrary grudge holder!”

 

.

 

Nick was wandering back to the foyer, half his brain focused on the fact that it was going on three in the morning and he had to be up in a couple hours for the radio—he was definitely getting a cab—and the other half wondering where Harry had got to.

Shockingly though, he was right where Nick had left him, crouched down in the entryway and playing some game with Stinky, feigning back and forth and alternating between tossing a ball and a rather bedraggled looking bone toy. Stinky was having the time of his bloody life, barking madly and wagging his tail so quickly it was almost a blur. 

He looked like a puppy again, tongue lolling out and eyes fixed on Harry’s snake-charmer-like dance, all but jumping up and down in his excitement.

Harry didn’t even notice Nick come back, too enthralled in getting Stinky wound up right when he was meant to be going to sleep, smile threatening to split his face. He’d taken off his jacket and was just in his socks, crouched down playing with Nick’s dog and looking so at home, so much like he belonged.

Nick just stood there, staring, for a lot longer than was probably normal, and he had absolutely no desire to know what his face looked like right then.

Just...

 _Shit,_ he thought, really emphatically, and then he was striding over, his footsteps causing Harry to turn his grin up in Nick’s direction.

And Nick honestly had no idea what possessed him, had been doing _so well_ on the self control front, but suddenly he was pulling Harry up and tugging him in until they were pressed fully together, their teeth clicking when he closed the distance between them. 

Harry was laughing and Nick couldn’t stop smiling, and now he knew exactly what stupid expression he was wearing, because he’d seen it in what seemed like every picture of the two of them floating around the internet.

Maybe he should have stepped back then, written it off as drunken stumbling before it went too far, but honestly?

Fuck it.

Why shouldn’t he have this?

Harry was here and trying to kiss him back around his own grin, and Nick was owed. The universe owed him this.

He got one hand tangled into Harry’s hair and pulled just shy of too roughly, some sense memory from long ago. Apparently it had been a good instinct though, because Harry groaned and suddenly neither of them were smiling anymore.

“Fuck,” Harry breathed, ducked his head to press his lips against Nick’s pulse. He sucked lightly and Nick’s breath hitched, his head tilting slightly to the side and his hand tightening in Harry’s hair, holding him there. “ _Nick_.”

And then Harry had a hand scrabbling at his buttons, leaving more and more of his chest exposed, and moving down with his mouth as new skin was bared.

They were—they were in the bloody foyer, and much as Nick wanted this never to stop, he stumbled back a few steps further into the house.

Harry got the idea, straightened up and followed him through to the master. He was evidently on a mission though, went right back to where he’d left off the moment they cleared the doorway.

Nick wasn’t entirely sure when his shirt had ended up on the floor, but it was gone by the time he was falling back onto the bed, pulling Harry with him.

Next thing he knew, Harry was kneeling between his legs, pulling at Nick’s belt and tugging his flies open. He’d lost his own shirt at some point, and had Nick taken that off? Or had he done it himself? Nick decided he didn’t care, was so busy staring at the way Harry had transformed himself into a canvas, covered himself with memories and nonsense and beautiful sketches—so many more than the last time Nick had seen him like this—that he almost didn’t register what Harry was saying.

“Can I—will you let me? I’m still, I’m not very good at this—”

And Nick almost laughed, was so turned on he could barely speak, “Fuck if I care,” he breathed.

Which evidently was all the encouragement he needed, because at that, Harry—wonderful, shameless Harry—had Nick’s trousers and pants down his legs and off with impressive speed considering how tight they’d been. He shucked his own clothes, giving Nick a brief view of the laurels and tiger before he sank down on his front, wrapping his hand around Nick and licking over the head of his cock, and suddenly Nick wasn’t paying attention to the tattoos anymore.

And really, he _was_ good at this. Unpracticed, sure, a bit sloppy and he couldn’t quite get the rhythm right, but that had it’s own charm. Because, and Nick hated himself a bit for this, but that meant there hadn’t been many people to teach him the ins and outs. He was using the same tricks Nick had taught him so long ago, and _fuck_ if it wasn’t doing something to Nick’s insides, something that made the burning feeling in his gut flare even brighter, much as his brain was telling him to stop being such a hypocrite.

It wasn’t even—obviously Harry had had a lot of sex. He wasn’t cruel about it, didn’t leave a trail of broken hearts, but he drifted from bed to bed like he drifted from city to city. And Nick honestly and truly didn’t mind, had had his own fair share of drifting, if he were being honest, and didn’t resent Harry his in the slightest, but…this meant something. This was rare, and Nick was intoxicated with it.

Harry hummed around him and Nick’s hips jumped off the bed a little before he got himself under control. Harry didn’t seem to mind, widening his jaw and trying to take him deeper, and _fucking hell_ , Nick dared anyone to be unaffected by the sight of Harry Styles staring up at them, chin slick and pupils blown.

He reached a hand down to brush his fingers over Harry’s cheek, pressed a thumb against the corner of his mouth where it was stretched wide. _Christ._ Nick smoothed his hand up, petted lightly at Harry’s hair until he nudged his head up a bit, and Nick took the hint, wound his fingers into the slightly sweaty curls and pulled.

Harry _whined_ , deep in the back of his throat so that Nick felt it more than heard it and fuck, this was going to be over embarrassingly quickly.

“You should give yourself more credit,” he gasped, and Harry pulled off, grinned up at him before he ducked back down, picked up the pace slightly. Nick’s head fell back against the mattress.

God.

This was—a whirlwind. He sent a silent apology to Jane for scoffing at her, because this? Harry, like this? Was a force of nature.

It probably hadn’t even been ten minutes, but, “Harry,” Nick tugged on his hair in warning, trying to tug him off. “Haz, stop, I’m going to—”

Harry got the message, pulled off and took over with his hand for a bit. He jerked his wrist a few times, thumbing over the head, and Nick was gone.

“Fuck,” he murmured, after he’d taken a second to get his breath back, opened his eyes to the sight of Harry licking the pad of his finger, which, hell. He really was trying to kill him.

Harry crawled up when Nick beckoned, let him flip them so his curls were spilling over the mattress. The slow smile spreading over Harry’s face matched Nick’s own, and god, he was beautiful.

Nick leaned down, closed the space between them, and he could taste himself on Harry’s tongue. He didn’t usually like that—didn’t mind it, but it didn’t do much for him—but apparently this was the night for exceptions. He made a noise in the back of his throat, deepened the kiss and let his weight fall a bit more onto Harry, pushing him down into the mattress.

Harry all but melted, the arm that he’d had wrapped loosely around Nick’s neck falling to the bed beside his head, and Nick had somehow forgotten about this, the way Harry sometimes got during sex, soft and pliant and like it didn’t even matter if he came.

Nick ground his hips down into Harry’s, and Harry whimpered, eyes glazed, mouth going slack. Maybe it didn’t matter to Harry, but it sure as hell mattered to _Nick_. He got a hand between them, pulling roughly until Harry gasped, flush high on his cheeks, because this part? This part Nick did remember.

He mouthed down Harry’s neck, bit sharply at his collarbone, and Harry arched his back, pulled Nick’s free hand up to press against his throat. Nick let it rest there for a while, picked up the pace with his other hand for a few minutes before he pushed with the first, ever so slightly, and that was apparently all it took for Harry to cry out, spilling over Nick’s hand between them.

Harry’s breathing was loud, and Nick gave him a second, smoothed his hand around and cupped the back of Harry’s head, running his thumb over his cheek a few times. He moved down slightly after a bit, pressed into the spot where Harry’s dimple would be, and it appeared, right on cue. Harry’s smile broadened, crinkling his eyes and scrunching his nose, and Nick almost wanted to look away.

It was blinding, like looking into the sun.

He ducked his head, pressed a kiss to Harry’s shoulder. “Let me—I’ll just grab a cloth, yeah?”

Harry nodded, smile briefly becoming a yawn, but didn’t seem to want to let go where he was holding onto Nick’s arm.

Nick laughed softly, “You’ll have to,” he gestured vaguely, and Harry’s grin turned sheepish.

“Right,” his voice was rough when he spoke, and Nick winced, decided he was going to make a detour for some hot water with honey and lemon on the way to find a flannel.

Harry was mostly asleep by the time he got back, but he roused enough to smile in thanks at the mug Nick handed him, have a few sips while Nick wiped them both off. He tossed the cloth into the corner when he was done, not caring in the slightest that he should probably have rinsed it out or at least hung it up, and crawled back up next to Harry.

Nick set the mug on the nightstand when Harry handed it to him—there was making a mess of his sheets and then there was spilling a mug full of watered down honey on his bed—and settled down on the pillow.

Harry rolled into him, always tactile but especially so right now, resting his head on Nick’s shoulder and lying half on top of him.

Nick took a deep breath, let his arm wrap around Harry’s shoulders and started gently carding his fingers through his hair. His lips turned up at the sound of Harry’s contented sigh, and he watched as Harry spun one of his rings around in a slow circle, the picture of relaxation.

Harry’s eyes were drooping, but he laughed slightly, “Well…”

“Well,” Nick agreed, as if they’d just had a full conversation, and he could feel the grin Harry pressed into his skin in response.

Harry closed his eyes, and they lay there silently for some endless span of time until Nick felt the breath against his shoulder even out.

It was probably going on four, and Nick had to be up in an hour and a bit if he had any hope of making it in to work on time.

He didn’t really sleep, just sort of lay there and drifted, and spent the time trying desperately to set himself to rights.

To remind himself that he couldn’t have this, now that his head was clearing and rational thought was settling back in. That he shouldn’t place the kind of expectations on Harry that he clearly didn’t want.

It was harder than it should have been, with Harry right there, warm and real and probably drooling on him. The memory of his smile was too fresh, his laugh ringing in Nick’s ears.  

But that day, when Nick had asked Harry about the two of them? That wasn’t a rumour, or the Mail, or a tumblr post. That had been Harry himself telling Nick that he wasn’t ready, that he didn’t want to settle down yet, that he’d dreamed about _someday_ but didn’t want _now._

And that was fine. Truly. Nick couldn’t have understood better, couldn’t imagine the possibilities Harry had at his fingertip, the things he’d have been giving up the chance to experience.

Nick wasn’t insecure enough to think that he wasn’t a passable option under normal circumstances, but this was Harry.

Far be it from him to cage in a bird that was meant to experience everything the world had to offer, that deserved to get everything he wanted out of life.

Nick’s world was, if not small, then smaller, and that was okay.

He probably shouldn’t have let himself have this, because it was just going to be harder to let it all go now, but what a thing to consider regretting. He’d done it, and it had been wonderful, and so long as he didn’t let it ruin anything, tonight was a memory he was keeping to bring out on rainy days.

He closed his eyes, breathed for a minute.

 _One, two, three, four_ in.

 _One, two, three, four_ out.

He’d done this before and been alright.

Besides, he was older now, more pulled together. If twenty-seven year old Nick had somehow managed it, well. He’d be fine.

The past year, if nothing else, had proven that he always was.

 

.

 

“Harry,” someone was saying, shaking his shoulder slightly, but he was so comfortable, didn’t want to move. “Haz, come on, I’ve got to—” 

Harry blinked his eyes open, and there was Nick. The night before came back in a rush, had never really left his mind, and he started to smile before he noticed that Nick was dressed.

“What…”

“I’ve got to run, Haz,” he was smiling softly, and it looked genuine, but it didn’t match up at all to what he was saying.

Harry cleared his throat, “Time’s it?” he slurred.

“About half five, which, I know, is a revolting hour of the morning, but there’s radio for you.” Nick was grinning, sounding so much more awake than Harry was feeling, and he tried his best to snap out of his tired fog.

“I’m…my flight is this afternoon. I—I’ve got to…”

“You’ve got loads of time, don’t worry.” Which had not at all been what Harry was worried about. “Sleep a bit more. You can set an alarm, or I could try to call around eight, if you’d like? Just to make sure you’re up?”

“Uh, sure, that would be…” He shook his head, “Grim—”

“I wouldn’t have woken you, but I _hate_ waking up alone, and I just. I wanted to say bye, and have a fantastic tour, you’ll be _sick_ , I’m sure,” Nick smiled at his own ribbing, and Harry tried to join him, but he felt a bit like his head was spinning.

“Nick—”

“Really, have the best time. Live your life to the fullest! Be wild and crazy and send me a postcard, yeah?”

Harry sat up, shook his head slightly. “Yeah, uh, sure. Listen, last night—”

“Harry, seriously, you’re about to jet off on a world tour. Go live your life. Don’t let anything hold you back, least of all me.”

God, this was…

Harry cleared his throat, swallowed.

“I’ve heard that before.”

Nick laughed, “I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

He felt a bit like he was floundering, like they were having three conversations at the same time and he wasn’t keeping up with any of them. “Grim…”

“Honestly Harry, go be a superstar. I’ll be here when you get back. We’ll try for our second bromance of the year award.”

Harry blinked, and then Nick was leaning over to pull him into a rather bone-crushing hug before snagging his sneakers off the floor and heading for the bedroom door.

“Knock ‘em dead, popstar,” he grinned.

And then he was gone, and Harry heard him saying goodbye to Pig, heard the front door close and the lock turning, before all was quiet.

A second _bromance of the_ —

He looked at his phone, debated texting Nick, except, what would he even say?

He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. God, what a mess. Allegedly, the two of them were professional communicators. Harry rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the sleep from them.

Nick had been smiling, had looked happy.

Which was good.

Obviously.

Except that Harry had absolutely no idea where they stood, and even more than that…  

He had to leave.

He’d be gone by the time Nick got back. He had a flight to catch, had no time to get any further into this, to figure out what was going on in Nick’s head. He’d been _‘eighteen, and not here’_ and he was about to be twenty-six and not here, and of course they’d both known that already, that had been the point of going out last night, but—goddammit.

They were so close, and—Harry let himself fall back onto the pillows, stared at the ceiling.

Fuck.

 _Fuck._  

 

.

 

He made it four months, which, all things considered, he didn’t think was anything to scoff at.

Four months of texting back and forth and listening to Breakfast on the iPlayer app when he woke up, messaging Nick about guests or funny moments hours after the fact because he was trying to make it through this tour well rested, couldn’t justify getting up early or staying up all hours of the night to hear it live. He refused to miss it though, both out of loyalty and a desire to hear Nick’s voice that he wasn’t examining too closely.

Four months before whatever this was, this feeling that had him pacing around his hotel room by himself instead of going to find Mitch or Jeff or anyone else down the hall. He felt restless in a way he rarely did, could feel the last traces of rum swirling through his head, but he’d had that drink with dinner and it had been too long since then to blame the itch under his skin on alcohol.

He grabbed his phone, didn’t let himself think too hard about what he was doing, didn’t really let himself think at all until the ringing stopped and he was speaking, not even leaving space for a _‘hello’_.

“The thing is, I don’t want a bromance of the year.”

There was a pause. “Harry?” Nick’s voice was groggy, and _shit_ , he hadn’t checked the time difference. Harry didn’t think he’d forgotten that Nick was an ocean away before calling since the One Direction days.

He’d probably feel bad about that, he figured, once he stopped feeling like he was going to burst apart.

Except—didn’t Nick sleep with his phone on silent? Harry had heard him say so multiple times on the show, and he’d have had no reason to make that up.

Was he set to ring through Nick’s _do not disturb_?

Harry shook his head, told himself that it didn’t matter.

It mattered.

“I don’t, Nick, I…I was out tonight, with Angela and a bunch of her friends. You remember Ang?” his voice was too loud, too wild, but he couldn’t seem to get it under control. “Anyways, we, like, we had dinner and went to some club and then her friends all bugged off and…I knew, I _knew_ what was happening, and I thought. Actually I’ve no idea what I thought, but we’d had fun, and we got in my car and came back here—”

“Harry,” Nick’s voice was strained, “I’m happy for you, but it’s three in the morning, and I have to be up in two hours to do the radio, and to be honest, I don’t—”

“No, listen to me. We came back and got in the elevator and we were almost at my room when I realised that, that I couldn’t do it. That I didn’t even _want_ to, and…Nick,” Harry licked his lips, swallowed, took a deep breath. “I don’t want another bromance of the year award,” he finished, almost in a whisper.

There was a long moment of silence.

“Harry, what are you…” a breath. “What,” Nick cut off again.

“I’m sorry I woke you, I know this…isn’t the best time, but. Nick, what if we, what if we just did it? Forgot all the reasons this might be a bad idea, and just…went for it? It’s been, we’re going on a decade here, and I think. I think maybe we could finally…”

Nick’s inhalation had him trailing off, and Harry listened as he let the air out quickly in what could have been amusement, had it sounded happy, but was more likely incredulity. Harry felt a bit off kilter himself, abstractly wished that he had a drink in his hand, though he made no move towards the minibar.        

Nick sounded much more awake, “Haz, it’s…the idea is amazing, it really is. The two of us, it’s a fairytale.” He paused, and Harry closed his eyes, somehow knew what was coming. “But this, this isn’t actually a film. And you don’t—”

“Nick, I do,” he was almost begging, wished he could muster up a bit more composure. “I want this. I think I’ve always wanted this.”

“Harry,” Nick sounded pained, “you wanting it…that isn’t. It’s not enough. I—that white picket fence that you’re not ready for? I want it, Harry. I want it badly. The clubs and the fashion awards and the parties, I love that, you know I do. And I want to do it with you. But Haz, that’s not…I want more. I want the whole thing.”

God, Harry wished he’d never said that. “Grim, I want the whole thing too.”

Silence.

“I know I said I wasn’t sure before, but Nick, I’m sure now.”

“Harry…” There was a long pause, as if Nick was trying to be more careful with his words than he normally was, “it’s okay not to want your whole life set out for you at twenty-six. God knows I didn’t. I wanted to be free to live it up at parties and, and have a mad one in Ibiza, and…” he took a breath. “Don’t force yourself into something just because—”

“I wouldn’t be—that was ages ago. Grim, I said that ages ago. And I don’t think that now. I’ve tried ‘living it up’, it’s been months of nothing but ‘living it up’ and you know what? I’d trade it in in a heartbeat.”

“Harry, you’re missing—” he broke off, “there’s more to it than that. You know how complicated this would be. Can you imagine if we actually did this? How people would react?”

“I don’t care. We’d figure it out.” Harry could hear Nick breathing down the line into the pause that followed. “You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t—”

“I do. I believe you. This isn’t me proving, once again, that it’s possible to have a massive ego and simultaneous inferiority complex, although, fair of you to wonder.”

Harry huffed out a breath, because apparently it would be a cold day in hell before Nick wasn’t able to make him laugh at least slightly in any and every circumstance.

Nick’s voice was softer when he continued, “I think you want the picture of us you’ve got in your head.” He paused, “But Harry, that’s the easier one to want. The one where you’d actually have to talk about us in interviews? Where some people would quite literally hate you for it? As much as you don’t _want_ to care, you’d be bringing a tidal wave of press down on your head. You don’t want people to know everything about you? You want people to give you a bit of space? Then you don’t want this. Not the real ‘this’.”

Harry was silent.

“Obviously you’d never need to make some huge announcement, but Haz, I don’t like hiding. Not from the people I care about. Not when it matters. I’m rubbish at it.” Nick sighed, and Harry could picture him so clearly, sitting up in bed slightly bleary-eyed, and probably tugging on his hair as he spoke. “Listen…let’s talk about this more when you’re home. Finish off your tour. It’s only a few weeks, and I’ll see you when you get back, yeah?”

Harry cleared his throat, tried to gather himself, “Yeah, course. Of course. You’ll be my first stop.”

“Excellent,” Nick sounded like he was smiling, but he also sounded a bit like he was using his radio voice, so Harry wasn’t sure how to take it. The whole conversation had left him feeling off, out of sorts. Not that he’d felt overly settled at the start. “I’ll talk to you later then.” Nick paused briefly, “Take care of yourself, popstar.”

And he was gone before Harry could shake himself enough to properly respond.

He stared at his phone for a while after Nick had rung off, wishing that he were faster at coming up with the right thing to say when it counted. He was good with a joke, always had been, could hold his own in a lighthearted conversation with the best of them, but it was harder when it mattered.

Part of him blamed the media training, the instinct that he’d had trained into him to take advantage of pauses after uncomfortable questions, to seamlessly redirect the conversation to something easier.

He didn’t have much practice talking about things that were hard.

He eventually just tossed his phone across the bed, not sure if he was frustrated with himself or Nick or the situation in general. He was tempted to just go to sleep, but it was all of ten o'clock in—where was he right now? Indianapolis? And if he went to bed now he’d throw off his sleep schedule, be up by five or six. Not that he was able to keep much of a consistent schedule on tour anyways, but he tried. He was doing much better than he had when he was a teenager, and that was something at least.

Still, he was suddenly exhausted. Emotionally exhausted? Could one get emotionally exhausted? His lived experience would say yes, but really, what did he know.

He supposed it didn’t matter. He was wiped out whatever the cause, and he thought _sod it_. If his worst indulgence on this tour was early bed times, he could be doing a lot worse.

 

.

 

Unfortunately, sleep didn’t seem to be the answer. He’d always been a firm believer that things looked better in the morning, but really he felt just as thrown as he had the night before.

The next week passed in a haze of press between his shows, travelling around to different studios and radio stations and trying his best to remember the names of everyone he was introduced to.

In between interviews though, that conversation was all he could think about.

It was just, he couldn’t quite parse it, because Nick was right, but he was also _wrong_.

Obviously Harry didn’t want to—how had Nick phrased it?— _bring a tidal wave of press down on his head_ , but the press never lost interest in his love life anyways. He wouldn’t make any sort of big announcement about his sexuality, because even if he could ever settle on a label that felt right, he didn’t think that people who fell anywhere outside the strict norm should _have_ to make any sort of statement about anything, but then Nick had already known that too.

Really, he wouldn’t have to answer any questions that he didn’t want to, because he could easily block the topic from the reputable interviews he did, and it’s not as though the non-reputable papers were going to wait for facts anyways. Hell, what felt like half of England apparently thought they’d already been together for ages.

Gemma’s voice from so long ago echoed through his head: _the tabloids? You’re going to live your life based on what the tabloids are saying about you?_

No.

No, he wasn’t.

Which left, unfortunately, the bigger problem, the one of his own making. If he could ever stop himself from sabotaging any relationship he might want with Nick, it would be a miracle.

He’d been honest, at least—he _hadn’t_ been sure he was ready—and usually Harry found it hard to regret honesty. But Nick had a habit of remembering exactly what someone had said at only the most inconvenient of times. He’d forget conversations they’d had a week ago, was liable to forget plans they’d made the day before if Harry didn’t text him to remind him, but something that even dreamed of hinting at him not being wanted? Played even slightly into any of his insecurities?

Well.

It may as well have been made into a portable neon sign and lugged around at all times, for all the likelihood that Nick would forget a single word.

And Harry had known that, was the thing. He’d known that, but somehow he’d underestimated his power to wound, had been trying for comfort and apparently just delivered further hurt.

There had to be some way, though. Something he could do to make his current voice, the one that was saying yes, ring louder to Nick than the one from over a year ago that had said no.

He’d just…he’d figure it out. He’d finish up these interviews, play his last shows, and then he’d be home.

Surely, once he was back in London, he’d be able to come up with something.

Nick was, he thought with no small amount of fondness, a mess of contradictions. Fiercely private, but told his whole life’s story on the radio every morning. Loved a grand gesture, but didn’t want anyone to know the who, what, where, or why.

He probably couldn’t manage something that fell within that from across an ocean, but—soon. He’d plan a party or bake a cake or…or slash Jamie’s tires or something.

Possible that the brainstorming could use a little work.

That was fine, though. He had time, and worst came to worst, Louis always had an idea for some grand, embarrassing task up his sleeve.

That would probably be an awkward phone call, but to be quite honest, Harry had done a lot worse in the past, and he’d done it for the prospect of a whole lot less.

 

.

 

The interview he was sitting in was actually going rather well, Harry thought, with the questions mostly centering around his musical influences and fashion choices, and that was always the easier part. He’d been nervous for this one, was still always a bit weary of interviews or press that didn’t give his team any control of the editing, but so far so good. It helped that he liked her, with her quick smile and bright laugh.

“There’s been a lot of talk lately about you and children. Pictures of you and the most adorable little minions have been making the rounds online, and you’ve always been fairly well known for your love of kids. You have three godchildren, don’t you?”

“I do, yeah. They’re fantastic,” he smiled. “And yeah, I love kids. I really do. There’s a certain honesty there, you know? This wide-eyed appreciation and, sort of— _authenticity_ you see in children. It’s as if, as you grow up, you lose some uninhibited part of yourself that was just, like, fully you, y’know? And kids, they have that in spades.”

“Definitely.” A brief pause, and then, “Do you see yourself having some of your own? Or are you liking the cool uncle role too much to let it go?”

For some reason he hadn’t seen that one coming, even though he probably should have. “I think, I mean, I’d love to, don’t get me wrong. But I think…” he trailed off, habit telling him to grin and say that he was _maybe a bit young yet_ or _waiting for the right time_. Except he just…didn't want to. “I think—I’d need to be really in love before I’d want to bring someone so vulnerable into the situation. And it would be difficult, I suppose, with me being away so much, because I wouldn’t want to miss things. If I was going to have kids, I’d want to be _there_ , you know?” Evidently he couldn't completely suppress the instinct to deflect. He paused, took a breath. “But no, I mean, that part I could probably work out. It’s the other person that I think would be hard. Because I’d want to do it with someone, and I’d want to be sure about the two of us first.”

By the time he finished, Harry could almost see the war going on behind her eyes, deciding whether she wanted to risk alienating him by asking the obvious follow up, and yet desperately wanting his answer if he’d give it.

“And do you think you ever have been? Sure that you were really in love, I mean?”

Evidently the possible clickbait had won.

He was immediately ready with his if-I-told-you-I’d-have-to-kill-you response, complete with disarming smile, but something stopped him again.

He could see Jeff glance up from his phone out of the corner of his eye after a bit, raising an eyebrow at his hesitation. Harry was no stranger to long pauses, but this was stretching it a bit far even for him. The interviewer (Madison? He was pretty sure her name was Madison) was looking a bit like she’d just been dealt a really excellent hand in cards, but was trying to stay as neutral as possible in case anyone caught on.

“I…I think so.” God, what was he doing. This was being filmed. He switched tracks, “I think there’s a lot of different kinds of love, and I’ve met some really incredible people. Someone once told me I was in love with the whole world, and I don’t think they were wrong, really. I love my family, I love my friends, I love the crowds, and the fans, and the musicians I’m lucky enough to play with. I think you can fall in love for the span of a song, singing with someone, creating something together that really means something to you. And I think that’s beautiful.” He laughed, “I was definitely in love with Stevie Nicks when we did Landslide back in 2017. I mean, I was in love with her before that, don’t get me wrong, but it was, you know, magnified,” he grinned.

Madison grinned back, but wasn’t letting him off the hook, “But never the full-package-would-have-kids-with kind?”

He almost shrugged it off again, but— _I don’t like hiding. Not when it matters_.

When was the next time he’d have an opening like that?

“Not…not as often as people seem to think.” He took a deep breath, “I—once, maybe. I think I was, once.”

You’d have thought Christmas and her birthday had come simultaneously, given the look on Madison’s face, but she was clearly trying to rein it in. “But you’re not together anymore?”

Harry almost laughed. Had they ever been, really?

“No, no we’re not.”

“What happened?”

“I think…” And never let it be said that Harry Styles allowed the opportunity for a dramatic pause to pass him by. “I think maybe I was a bit young to see it for what it was. It was early One Direction days, right during a time when a lot of people were really invested in seeing me with someone else, and I just thought, how can I bring someone into this? And ask them to deal with everything it would have meant to be with me?” He’d never minded the rumours, not like Louis had, but he wasn’t oblivious. He’d seen the reaction every time he so much as glanced at anyone else. Harry shook his head, “I dunno, I thought I was protecting them. That it was for the best.” He steeled himself, “Looking back though, I think…I think I might have been protecting myself. That _I_ wasn’t ready yet, to deal with it. And that’s a bit hard. Self-sacrifice was much easier to live with than self-sabotage.” He smiled a bit self-deprecatingly, then grinned. “If only I had an outlet for all these emotions. Something artistic maybe?”

To her credit, Madison laughed and took her cue, “Have you thought about music? Something tells me you might have an aptitude.”

“I _haven’t_ actually. What an idea. Do you think I should? Maybe I could put an album together, come back and chat with you on the tour.”

“Well I think that sounds like a fantastic idea. In the meantime, everyone should check out this fantastic record by someone we’ve never heard of, just to tide themselves over.” She gestured dramatically as she held up the vinyl, and Harry made a show of examining it.

“Well I mean, it certainly _looks_ good. Love that album cover.”

“As do we all, believe me. It sounds pretty incredible too.” She paused, nodding very subtly to someone behind the camera. “Harry, thank you so much for coming today. Best of luck with the rest of your shows.”

So that was that, then. He smiled one last time, reaching over to shake her hand. “Thank you, it’s been lovely,” and then the cameras were off and the mics were down, so he gave in to the urge to run his fingers through his hair and wondered exactly how obvious that had been to anyone who cared enough to listen.

 

.

 

The answer, as it turned out, was not very.

Harry stared at the headline that screamed _HARRY STYLES ON TAYLOR SWIFT: I LOVED HER, BUT I WASN’T READY YET_ and supposed that it was impressive, in a way, that the media could still surprise him.

“You should’ve told me you were carrying such a torch, I’d have been more careful about shielding you from all the Swifty news.”

Harry craned his head over the back of the chair to glare at Jeff, though being upside-down might have slightly lessened the impact of it. “Ha ha. Right comedian, you are. Very funny.”

Jeff smirked, “Oh no, this one’s on you, my friend. Next time, don’t wait until _after_ we’ve signed the release to start spilling your heart all over the place.” His voice went up an octave, “‘I think so. Once.’ Christ, H.”

Harry huffed. “I just—I dunno. It was such a perfect moment, and I’m not…it’s like, who _cares_ , you know? I think, I think I…” he trailed off, not fully sure himself.

The smirk was gone, and his tone was noticeably less teasing, “Harry. Do you…want to make any sort of statement? Because we can do that, you know I’ve got your back a hundred percent. But if we’re doing this, we should do it. We need to organize, to plan.”

Harry didn’t say anything right away. “It’s not…I don’t want to make any sort of announcement. It’s not the sort of thing that would need announcing, you know?”

Jeff’s look said that he decidedly did not know. “H, it might not be the sort of thing that _should_ need announcing, or—forget announcing, obviously we’re not going to,” he waved his hand, “but, planning, or whatever. Unless I’ve read this very wrong and we actually are looking forward to another round of Haylor Heartbreak,” you could almost hear the capitalization, “then this is definitely the sort of thing that needs a plan. It doesn’t have to be a _complicated_ plan, but it needs to exist.”

The thing was, Harry had no idea how this was going to play out.

That phone call had been about the downsides for him, and he had no intention of letting any of those steer his life. But this was Nick, and sure, they went about it in different ways, but he was just as talented as Harry at talking around what he actually wanted to say.

The downsides in the press? That wasn’t just going to be something Harry had to deal with. He couldn’t imagine Nick was eager for the reality of it all either.

“Jeff, I just—I don’t know yet. I don’t know what he’s thinking, I don’t know if he’s even remotely interested—”

Jeff snorted, “You don’t know if he’s remotely interested,” he parroted back, rolling his eyes. “Really, H? You have seen him when he’s in the same room as you?”

“Yes, _thank you_ , Jeffrey, your opinion has been noted, at length. But since you haven’t actually spoken to him for more than 10 minutes at a time in the past couple of years, you’ll forgive me—”

“Okay.” Harry was choosing to take Jeff’s exasperation as fond. “Let’s pretend—for the sake of argument—that he _is_ interested. What then? This is clearly something you’re pursuing.”

“Well, I mean. ‘Clearly’ is a strong word.”

“H,” Jeff was staring in a way that suggested Harry was being a bit slow, “you basically just told the man that you want to have his babies, you _want a love like he made you feel when you were 18_ ,” Jeff somehow managed to sing-song in monotone, “Live. On TV. I think this is something you’re doing.”

Harry was silent for a long moment, with a look forming on his face that Jeff recognized from when he had gone to tell Syco he was signing elsewhere all those years ago, and before his first solo show, and from the moments before he shot the helicopter scenes for Sign of the Times.

“Yeah,” Harry cleared his throat. “Yeah, alright. Tell whoever you need to tell.”

There was a speaking pause before Jeff’s mouth quirked into a smile.

“Well okay then.” He grabbed his coffee and turned to head out onto the balcony. “And H?” Harry glanced over, and Jeff’s smile was wide. “Good for you.”

 

.

 

It wasn’t that Nick was hung over, but he’d been out late enough that he was feeling it the next morning. It was only 7:40 and he was already daydreaming about going back to bed. On the bright side, he’d had a lot of practice not letting that show through in his voice.

“And Sinead is here! Hi Sinead!”

“Hello nation! Good morning, Grimmy!”

“Someone’s cheerful this morning,” Nick grinned, “What have you got for us today that’s put you in such a good mood?”

Sinead laughed, “To be honest, I think it might be the coffee I had on the way in. The shop near my house started opening earlier, so I’ve had a latte already. They drew a little leaf on top, so I’m feeling well pampered.”

Nick burst out laughing, “That’s that then, innit. Go and get a coffee, everybody. The entertainment news isn’t nearly as exciting as a latte art leaf.”

“No, no!” Sinead chuckled, “The news is good! Don’t despair, we’ve got all the gos coming your way. _Very_ interesting stuff. Actually, if I’m honest, I feel a bit like I’ve gone through some sort of time warp.”

“Well, you heard it here first, folks. The ent news may seem like a strange place to announce such a stunning discovery, but our very own Sinead Garvan has _invented time travel_ —”

Her laughter set him off too, and there was a solid few seconds of the two of them giggling into their mics before Sinead spoke again. “Possible that I have time travelled, because I actually can’t believe I’m saying this in 2020, but Kim Kardashian might be pregnant, and Harry Styles has been talking about Taylor Swift!”

Nick had seen Harry’s name on the prep sheet when he got in, had queued up the audio clip titled with his name and today’s date, but hearing that still sent a bit of a jolt through him. Taylor Swift? If this hadn’t been such a guest-heavy week he’d have had a chance to go over the clip in the production meeting. Unless—had they even had the clip yesterday afternoon? He didn’t remember seeing it. Maybe it had been a last minute addition this morning? Either way, that he hadn’t heard it was just his luck, honestly.

“You know what, I _do_ feel a bit like I’ve woken up about seven years ago now.” And he did, but it had more to do with the feeling of talking about Harry on the radio than anything to do with Kim Kardashian’s baby.

“Yes, exactly! The more things change…” Sinead sing-songed, and Nick laughed, though his head was drifting a bit. Of all the nights to have been off DJing and not checking tumblr.

“Updates on Kim K and Harry Styles coming up after Stormzy, on BBC Radio One!” Nick faded in the record, muted his mic, and watched as the usual batch of tweets from whenever Harry’s name came up on the radio streamed in.

How on earth had anyone convinced Harry to talk about Taylor in an interview? They must have asked him about Two Ghosts, though that was a bit odd considering they had twelve new tracks to talk about. And Harry had actually said something worthy of Sinead quoting it on the radio? Nick almost laughed, ‘sometimes things change, uh...and you can, y’know, do all the same things, and sometimes it’s just different, you know?’

Different, indeed.

Unless they were about to play the world’s most vague and stumbling clip? In which case, very much Harry’s style. And, he figured, it was worth noting that he would be completely and totally endeared if Harry _had_ reverted to his twenty year old self and given an incomprehensible answer.

God, he was fucked. Just once in his life, at some point, he should make a romantic decision that wasn’t likely to end in complete emotional destruction. Just as a change.

“You alright?” Sinead’s voice broke him out of his thoughts, and he realized he’d been staring off into space, lost in thought, for a good two minutes.

Strong start to the day.

“Yeah, god, sorry. I’m in my own little universe this morning, dunno what’s wrong with me. Well, I mean, I slept horribly and spilled my coffee in the cab and I’m fairly sure I’ve got my t-shirt on the wrong way round under this pullover because the tag is itching me—”

“But other than that, you’re absolutely wonderful?” Sinead grinned, and truly, he was so thankful for her. What a gem, always ready with a laugh.

“Exactly.”

The song wrapped up, and he faded his mic back in, “ _Love_ that song. Anyways, Sinead is here! Hiya!”

“Morning!”

“What have you got for us this morning, then?”

“Right, so first up, Kim Kardashian. You remember she has three children, yeah? And they had the third with a surrogate, because she wanted another sibling for her kids, but there was talk about how it could be dangerous for her. Apparently she’d had all these complications with the first two—it was quite sad, really.” Sinead paused briefly, “So they had the baby, all was well and it was quiet on that front for a while, but then recently it’s been in the American media that she might be having another! Evidently Khloé’s posted a short video on her snapchat of the youngest—very cute—and Khloé’s saying in the background how good he’ll be with the little ones.” She paused significantly.

“Well well well,” he was fairly sure he sounded a bit like a cartoon villain, but apparently it was just that sort of morning. “ _Very_ interesting.”

Sinead hummed in agreement, “Right? Now we don’t know anything for sure. Maybe he’d just done something very responsible and she was speaking hypothetically, or maybe someone else in the family is expecting—”

“Now _that_ would be exciting.”

“Wouldn’t it? More little fashion icons running around. I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”

Nick laughed, “Yeah, that’s one secret with a built-in time limit.”

“Exactly. So, more on that within nine months,” she grinned. “Now, onto Harry Styles. Have you heard this?”

“No, I haven’t!” God, Nick wished he were lying. “I was DJing last night, so my pop culture knowledge is twelve hours out of date, which is practically twelve _years_ in entertainment time. I’m well excited now though, go on.”

They laughed—hers slightly more genuine than his, though he didn’t think people would notice—and Sinead continued, “So Harry’s over in America right now touring, and he was chatting with a reporter over there when she asked him about children. You’ve seen the pictures making the rounds online of him and the godkids,” Sinead paused.

Nick nodded, because if he was honest he was pretty sure he’d _taken_ at least one of them. “I have, yeah. Massively adorable.”

“Right. Trust me, everyone would agree with that assessment. So anyways, she asks whether he’d ever consider having any of his own, and it seemed a bit like she expected him to brush her off, but he actually gave quite a long and thoughtful response.”

Which didn’t surprise Nick at all. Give that boy time to gather himself and let him speak without cutting him off and suddenly he was Charles bloody Dickens. The truly amazing thing is that people probably would pay per word to hear Harry talk. What a business opportunity.

He shook himself and focused back in. God, he needed caffeine.

Sinead wasn’t finished, “He was saying that it might be hard right now, what with him being away a lot, because he’d want to be very present in his child’s life. Which, I thought that was quite nice actually.” She paused, and Nick hummed in agreement. “But then he said he could probably figure that part out—that the real problem was he’d need to be really in love with the person he was having them with.”

Which…

Harry was talking about his love life in an interview? Bringing it up himself? The last time he talked to Harry, well.

Actually, the last time he talked to Harry, Nick was pretty sure this was exactly the sort of thing he’d given as an example of obstacles in their way, things Harry wouldn’t want to do. And Harry had agreed, hadn’t he?

He definitely hadn’t _disagreed_.

He wouldn’t…

Sinead had said Taylor Swift. Harry was talking about Taylor. He couldn’t possibly have—

“So _then_ , and this is the really interesting bit, then she asks if he’d ever felt like that about anyone, been really in love, and he _actually answered her_.” At least he wasn’t the only incredulous one. “Here’s what he said.”

He’d gathered himself enough that he met his cue to start the recording, and a slightly mechanized version of Harry’s voice spilled out. “Not…not as often as people seem to think. I—once, maybe. I think I was, once.”

The interviewer asked if they were still together, and Harry sounded almost amused when he said no, which, Nick thought, might have been what gave her the courage to ask him what had happened.

“I think…I think maybe I was a bit young to see it for what it was. It was early One Direction days, right during a time when a lot of people were really invested in seeing me with someone else, and I just thought, how can I bring someone into this? And ask them to deal with everything it would have meant to be with me? I dunno, I thought I was protecting them. That it was for the best.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

Harry was still talking, “Looking back though, I think…I think I might have been protecting myself. That _I_ wasn’t ready yet, to deal with it.”

That was definitely Harry’s voice, with his characteristically slow speech and slightly odd pauses, but this…this wasn’t—actually happening. He wasn’t actually hearing Harry announce this to the world live on the radio. Someone had invented a new version of Call or Delete and somehow he hadn’t been told, or he was about to start awake like he was starring in Total fucking Recall, or—

“And that’s a bit hard. Self-sacrifice was much easier to live with than self-sabotage.” There was a pause before Harry continued, and Nick realized that he’d stopped breathing, was really glad his mic was off when he took an audible breath. “If only I had an outlet for all these emotions. Something artistic maybe?”

Harry was joking, being his usual sarcastic self like he hadn’t just said all of that, like it wasn’t a massive deal, like Nick’s heart wasn’t going double speed and showing no sign of ever slowing down again.

There was absolutely no chance that had been about Taylor Swift.

Bloody hell.

The clip faded out, and Sinead jumped back in, “And then they went back into chatting about his album. Very interesting, though. Unusual, him talking that much about his personal life without prompting. Everyone’s been saying he was talking about Taylor, and the timing lines up. I mean he was, what? Eighteen, when they were together?”

Nick felt a bit lightheaded. “Yeah, eighteen. He was eighteen.”

His voice was fainter than usual, and Sinead threw him a concerned look before she picked back up again. “So, there we have it. Whaddya reckon? Haylor reunion on the horizon?”

It took a second to register that he was meant to answer that, “Maybe!” He’d apparently overcorrected, and now sounded more than slightly manic. “I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?”

The concerned look had amplified, though Sinead still sounded cheerful as ever, “So we will. And that’s all for now, so I’ll see you back here soon!”

“Thanks, Sinead!” He faded in the next song as quickly as possible, not wanting to give himself any more air time until he could get his fucking voice under control.

He wasn’t even sure why he was reacting so strongly. It’s not like Harry had said anything particularly earth-shattering, or that he hadn’t been hinting at this for months. But Nick was just…floored.

The rest of the show passed in a bit of a blur. He remembered assuring Sinead that he really was fine, bit of a headache, nothing to worry about. He remembered laughing with Fifi about his completely zombie-like appearance this morning, and he was sure that he’d been talking about _something_ during his links, but what exactly that had been was a complete blank. Will and Fifi hadn’t been making any overly alarmed faces though, so he figured he was probably alright.

Before he knew it he was sitting in production meetings, and then those were wrapping up too and he was home, sitting on his sofa with Pig asleep on the floor and Stinky sniffing around his feet.

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, but the sun had almost set by the time he abruptly decided he couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

In a fit of—masochism? nostalgia? he wasn’t sure—he put on Harry’s first album, and immediately decided that Meet Me in the Hallway was either the absolute best or worst song he could have chosen to listen to right then. It had almost wrapped up when he surged forwards to hit the button to restart it.

 

 _Just let me know, I’ll be at the door, at the door_ …

 

 _…and maybe we’ll work it out_ …

 

_We don’t talk about it, it’s something we don’t do…cause once you go without it, nothing else will do…_

 

Was this—

There was a ninety-nine percent chance that he was projecting, but really, could this have been any more apt?

Was this…about them?

There was no way.

Still…

Shouldn’t he be trying to get better?

It’s not as though Nick was _unaware_ that he had trouble trusting people, that he was terrified of committing and then having it be meaningless. There was a reason he had a million friends and still always felt like he only had a handful of people he could talk to. The wedding fiasco probably hadn’t exactly helped, either.

 

_Gotta get better._

 

Because really, he was pushing Harry away, over and over, and for what? Because he might, somewhere down the line, get hurt? As if the current will-they-won’t-they was doing his emotional state any favours.

He was pretty sure the build-up was only fun in movies, because in reality it just made him feel jumpy and nervous all the time. It threw him whenever he wasn’t sure whether or not he was lying, denying there was anything there. Not that he had any compunctions about lying to people who had no right asking questions, but he’d like to _know_ that’s what he was doing.

He huffed out a breath, agitated, and ran a hand through his hair.

The whole thing was just—it was so _stupid_. Harry was on the radio telling the world that he thought he’d been really and truly in love, and Nick was on the phone telling him no because…because Harry might one day miss his freedom and leave? And they might not get to play happy families? That was going to happen anyways if Nick kept shoving him away every time he tried to take that final step closer.

He’d been at arm’s length with Harry before. He’d been there for years, the text-twice-a-week kind of relationship, and it was fine—good, even, he’d never regret their friendship even if they had drifted apart a bit—but it was nothing like the past year.   

And he could just…have that. All the time. Harry was offering that to him on a silver platter, had been for ages really, and all he had to do was say yes.

He could do that.

Probably.  

 _A rebound never feels like a rebound when it's happening_.

Except…it had been over a year at this point.

He'd had his rebound stage, and it hadn't involved Harry, and he was positive this wasn't some sort of strange power play on his part. That this was real, wasn’t just him proving something to—himself? Jamie? The world?

Whoever it would have been, it didn’t matter.

He wanted this, he wanted it for the right reasons, and really, it had been a long time coming.  

And then suddenly he burst out laughing, because—and he didn’t believe in signs, but honestly—Harry’s voice had just belted _Open up your eyes, shut your mouth and see, that I’m still the only one who’s been in love with me_ at the exact second he’d thought that.

Which, _Harry_.

A more inaccurate lyric had never been written.

It had always been one of his favourite lines on that album, mainly because it was just so blatantly _false_.

Even if every single rumour had no basis in reality—and Nick could practically hear his grandmother saying ‘there’s no smoke where there’s no fire!’—Nick had it on _excellent_ authority that that had stopped being true far earlier than 2017.

Evidently his mirth had woken Pig, who took the opportunity to leap onto his lap as if she was still as light as the day he’d got her. He made an involuntary ‘oof’ noise, arranged her a little more comfortably, and tipped his head back on the sofa to stare at the ceiling.

Apparently this was his life now. Thirty-six years old, sitting on his sofa with his dogs, and laughing at nothing like he really had finally gone round the bend.

Which, alright.

Alright.

 

.

 

“Hello?”

He took a deep breath. _Your move, Grimshaw_. “Yes, hi. Jeff? It’s Nick. Uh—Grimshaw. Nick Grimshaw.”

He wanted to laugh, but he was worried it might sound a bit hysterical. That had been a strong start. Not like he talked for a living or anything. 

“Grimmy! Hi, how are you?”

Having a stress-related heart attack and questioning all of his life choices. “Good, yeah, thanks! And you?”

“Good, good. What can I do for you?” There was a lot of muffled noise on the other end of the line, and then it abruptly got much quieter, as if Jeff had closed a door or stepped into another room. “H isn’t here right now.”

“Oh, no, that’s—I was actually hoping to catch you. I was wondering if you could do me a favour?”

Jeff sounded a bit surprised, “Yeah, absolutely, if I can. What did you need?”

Nick took a deep breath. “Harry’s show, the last one, at the O2,” and wasn’t it poetic that he was ending his tour in London this time, rather than LA. Did he do that on purpose? To show he was coming home? Or was it just a total coincidence and Nick was reading far too much into it? _As per usual these days_ , he thought, rather sardonically. “I was wondering if you might be able to get me in?” He’d managed to make a statement sound like a question, because apparently at heart he was still a 12 year old schoolkid giving their first class presentation.

“Backstage?” Which, in Jeff’s defense, would have been the normal thing to be calling about.

Well, as normal as it could be to call your best-friend-maybe-more’s manager—who Nick was pretty sure he’d literally never phoned before in his life—rather than just going straight to the source.

God, this whole idea was idiotic. “Uh, no, actually. I was hoping you might be able to get me into VIP? Somewhere he’d be able to see me from the stage, ideally.”

There was a pause, “Yeah, I’ll—yeah, definitely,” Jeff sounded amused, and Nick wanted to die a little bit.

He forced himself to keep talking. “That would be incredible, thank you.” He paused, “Also, could you maybe not…mention this to Harry? It’s just, um…” Frankly he had no idea how to go on, because there was no explanation. This was possibly the most irrational thing he’d ever done, and that was saying something.

Jeff saved him, “Absolutely. Don’t stress man, I got this.” Nick had spoken to enough people on the phone to tell that Jeff was enjoying this immensely. God.

“Thank you, honestly. That’s brilliant.”

“Of course.” This time Jeff did laugh out loud, “Whatever this is, it’s going to be a PR nightmare, isn’t it?”

Nick winced, “Probably.”

“Well, at least you’re honest.” Another pause, before, “Listen, I’m just in the studio with Meghan and I have to run,” Nick had entirely forgotten that it was morning in Los Angeles, “but I’ll figure it out and get the details to you asap. Definitely within the week.”

“Oh absolutely. Thanks, Jeff.”

“No problem, really. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah, course. Bye! Bye bye bye!”

And Nick rung off before he could say anything else mortifying.

Well.

Regret the things you do, not the things you don’t do, or whatever the motivational calendar his sister had given him for Christmas when he was fifteen had said.

Though to be honest, he couldn’t even really bring himself to regret setting this chain into motion. Not yet, anyways. The specifics of that phone call? Maybe. But even if this all ended in fire and brimstone, Nick figured he’d hate himself a lot more if he didn’t see this one through.

 

.

 

Backstage was madness.

It was the final show, and for some reason that meant that everyone had let their guards down enough for literally everything to go wrong. They couldn’t find his mic kit, his earpiece refused to power up, and he’d been chewing on his lip so Lou was about to take his head off for screwing up the makeup she’d come specifically to do.

Miraculously he’d managed to find both his shoes, so at least he was dressed, but that was about as far as his successes went. Mitch probably had a spare guitar pick anyways, he figured.

Somehow they managed to mostly get themselves sorted, people much more harassed than he was rushing around talking on headsets, ripping open packages of batteries and troubleshooting with the equipment.

He himself was in a bit of a daze, couldn’t quite believe this tour was already wrapping up. He’d been gone for five months, and at times he’d felt it, but right now it seemed like it had flown by. He remembered this feeling from the end of every tour he’d done, nostalgic and wistful and wanting it to go on forever. The last show especially, such an adrenaline surge, because it had to end on a good note—which, ha, he saw what he’d done there—or that would be your memory of the entire ride.

Not the night to forget your lyrics.

So he was buzzing a bit, fidgeting in some combination of nerves, anticipation, dread, and excitement. He knew his opener’s set like the back of his hand, could tell that they were about ten minutes away from wrapping up, and he both wanted to fast-forward until he was on stage and wanted their last couple songs to stretch forever.

It wasn’t even as though he hadn’t played this arena before. He’d been here with One Direction, he’d been here on his own with the first two albums. Hell, he’d performed here on his own last night.

Still though, it was the O2. It never really lost it’s shine. Never mind the statistics— _world’s busiest music arena! Beat out MSG!_ —this was his city. He had an arena full of Londoners who had paid to be here, to listen to him, and he wouldn’t let them leave disappointed.

“H, you almost ready?” Harry jumped and spun around to face Alisha, who was standing in the doorway with her clipboard, headset in one ear.

He nodded, “I’m good, yeah.”

“Excellent. They need you in the lounge side of stage in five, and this place is a bit of a maze,” she laughed a bit, and Harry got the impression she’d taken a wrong turn on the way here, smiled back at her. “You might want to head out now.”

“Will do. Thanks, Leesh. You coming with?”

“Nah, I have to track down Mitch. Stepped out for a smoke or something apparently, according to Sarah,” she rolled her eyes a bit, fond, “but I’ve no idea _where_ he decided to do that, so,” she waved her hands.

Harry wished he could point her in the right direction, but frankly he had no idea either. He pulled an I’ve-got-nothing face, widening his eyes and stretching the corners of his lips to each side, and Alisha smiled.

“I’ll meet you there,” she finished ruefully.

He chuckled, “Gotcha.” He started down the hall, called, “Best of luck finding him! Would appreciate it if you succeeded!” over his shoulder.

How very rock and roll, late onto the stage because the guitarist snuck out of the venue for a fag. He smiled, shook his head. Mitch had the vibe too, was so much cooler than Harry would ever be.  

He’d only been in the lounge for a couple minutes though when they came in, Mitch strolling calmly with the slightest of grins on his face, and Alisha visibly restraining herself from physically propelling him to walk faster.

“The gang’s all here!” He crowed, throwing his arms around Alex and Claire to start off the pre-show group hug that his band all made a show of barely tolerating. Harry was onto them though, they appreciated his soppiness and arbitrary superstitions.

He took a deep breath once they’d all crowded together for a few moments, grinned, met each of their eyes in turn.

Right.

_Welcome to the final show._

 

.

 

He was three songs in before he saw it.

He’d gone out to a virtual tidal wave of screaming, a wall of flashing lights, an arena packed to capacity, and Harry _loved this_. The fans and the cheering and the lights and twenty thousand people chanting his name.

He’d grinned wolfishly and gone right into it, hadn’t stopped to say hello, and the audience didn’t even blink, didn’t lower their voices. They just switched to singing right along with him, and wasn’t that a feeling. The songs he’d written reverberating around him from all sides, all these people knowing all the words to songs he’d poured parts of himself into.

He didn’t want to let that sense of immersion go, had meant to stop after the first song and thank everyone for coming, but—this was it. The last time he’d sing this set on stage, the last time he’d hear this album sung back at him in full, and it was heady.

After the third song though his throat was screaming at him, and he had to stop to have a drink of water, pour some over his face and onto the fans in the pit—a throwback to the old days he’d never been able to resist.

“HELLO LONDON!” he hollered into the mic, and noise to bring the house down rose around him from all sides. “Fancy meeting you here,” he smirked, though as he looked out on the crowd, up at the rows and rows of people, floor and first level and balconies full, his smile changed into one of gratitude. “What a lovely night. Can’t think of a better way to wrap up. This is a special one for me, last show, and I’m so glad I’m sharing it with you all.”

The cheering picked up in volume and he paused for a minute, let the moment stretch.

“This next song is one of my favourites on the album. I hope…I hope that when you hear it, it makes you think of someone who deserves the very best. I’ve said before that this album is about love—for family, for friends, for partners, for the world,” he paused, “for yourself. I hope you all know how incredible you are. So this one’s for you. This is—”

His eyes caught on a sign.

The corner of his mouth quirked, fond memories flooding the forefront of his mind.

It looked just like the one that—

And he froze.

Because…

He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, moved closer to the edge of the stage to try to make it out more clearly past the lights. 

That.

That was Nick.

That was Nick, and he was—

Harry had lost all control over his expression, could feel a smile so wide his cheeks were going to hurt spreading across his face.

That was Nick, and he was smiling back, a little hesitantly but oh so real, and he was holding a sign that said ROCK ME, HARRY.

Right there. For all the world to see.

Harry read it once, read it again. Wished he were holding a camera so he could take a picture of this moment. Could frame it, put it up on his wall, print extra copies and start handing them out as business cards or party favours or anything else he could think of.  

He smiled.

And smiled.

And smiled.

Tipped his head back, laughed jubilantly, freely, couldn’t wipe the blinding grin off his face.

He cleared his throat after a bit, tried to press his lips together, the corners of his mouth still noticeably twitching up.

“This is Silver,” his voice was tremulous, “and I hope you enjoy it.”

 

.

 

The press had a field day, and tumblr, predictably, lost their fucking minds.

Harry couldn’t have cared less if he’d tried.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> And that’s all for now, folks! 
> 
> Come cry with me on [tumblr](https://daretomarvel.tumblr.com/) about Harry Styles and/or living a Nick Grimshaw Appreciation Life™. (I’m completely serious, I am in desperate need of more fandom friends)
> 
> Also, the title of this fic is from [Passport Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ4AY_OMfGg) by JP Cooper (aka Nick and Harry’s wedding song), which, if you haven’t heard it yet, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING FOR THIS HAS NOW BECOME THE HIGHEST PRIORITY.


End file.
